Since most disease biomarkers are not sufficiently selective, detection of a single biomarker provides only limited specificity and cannot be used for positive identification of a disease. To overcome this challenge, multiple tests extended over time are often carried out for positive disease identification. Health professionals often rely on multiple, discrete tests carried out with different and spatially distributed equipment for analysis and identification. This process leads to unacceptable time delays, costs, and inconvenience. This is especially true for complex diseases such as cancer. Highly reliable disease markers are often absent in complex diseases, requiring the health professional to depend on detection of multiple markers for decreasing false positives. Since early detection is key for successful treatment and for decreasing the mortality rate, development of a single device capable of detecting multiple biomarkers in very small concentrations in the presence of a very high background of similar molecules is essential. Unfortunately, currently available sensor platforms fail to satisfy the conditions of sensitivity, selectivity, simultaneous detection of multiple targets, cost, and the ability to use small-volume samples. However, biosensing technologies based on microfabricated cantilever arrays have the potential to satisfy all the stringent conditions for highly sensitive and selective multitarget detection in very small sample volumes.

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