Evanescent Wave-Based Photonic Biosensors for the Design and Evaluation of Advanced Cancer Immunotherapies

Personalized immunotherapies hold great promise for correcting cellular dysfunction, inhibiting tumor growth, and even achieving durable cancer eradication. However, conventional analytical methods used to design and evaluate immunotherapies often fall short as they typically cannot monitor cell activity in real time, lack multiplexed capabilities for rapid screening, and require complex sample preparation. These limitations impede a full understanding of the dynamic immune responses that drive therapeutic outcomes. Label-free optical biosensors based on evanescent wave interactions provide a compelling alternative, enabling sensitive, noninvasive, and high-resolution analysis of cellular regulation, signaling, and therapy-induced molecular changes. In this perspective, we highlight recent advances in optical biosensor technologies for molecular and cell analysis and explore their potential to accelerate the development, optimization, and precision application of next-generation immunotherapies.