Research advances of scanning electrochemical microscopy in biomedical field

Investigation of the abnormal behavior of pathological cells and tissues can provide important references for understanding the pathological mechanism of critical diseases and screening new drugs. Scanning electrochemical microscopy (SECM), an electrochemical principle-based scanning probe microscope, can record the currents or potentials when the probe scans above the sample surface and performs the characterizations of morphology and obtains various chemical informations of living cells in an in-situ , real-time and local way. The applications of SECM in the studies of critical diseases-related cells, cell spheroids and microtissues have been rapidly developed in the past 10 years. From the perspective of disease-related SECM researches, this review summarizes the research progress of SECM in the biomedical field from 2010 to 2020 from the levels of single cell to cell spheroid and microtissue. Firstly, the instrument composition, probe types and working modes of SECM are introduced. Secondly, the application progress of SECM in neurons, cardiomyocytes and tumor cells is introduced. Thirdly, we introduce the latest applications of SECM in cell spheroids and microtissues. Finally, we propose and prospect the challenges and development directions of the future applications of SECM in the biomedical field.