Low-cost transdermal biomarker sensing device
October 2022
ISEP School of Engineering, Polytechnic Institute, Porto, Portugal(1)
Swansea University, Swansea, United Kingdom(2)
Swansea University, Swansea, United Kingdom(2)
The skin interstitial fluid (ISF) contains biomarkers that complement other biofluids such as blood, sweat, saliva, and urine. It can be sampled in a minimally invasive manner and used either for point-of-care testing or real-time, continuous monitoring of analytes, the latter using microneedle arrays. In this study, the researchers describe combining microneedle technology with molecularly imprinted polymers to demonstrate the potential of transdermal electrochemical sensing. The molecularly imprinted polymer employed here is easy to produce; it can be thought of as a plastic antibody, detecting proinflammatory cytokine IL-6 that is present in many pathologic conditions of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer´s or Parkinson´s disease. Its synthesis is scalable, and the resulting sensor has a short measurement time (6 min), with high accuracy and a low limit of detection. The ability to mass-produce microneedle arrays and plastic antibodies will allow for low-cost transdermal sensing devices. The device could be used for routine point-of-care, and bloodless measurements in simpler settings, worldwide.
Molecular imprinted polymers on microneedle arrays for point of care transdermal sampling and sensing of inflammatory biomarkers
Felismina Teixeira Coelho Moreira(1), Sanjiv Sharma(2)
Added on: 01-19-2023
[1] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsomega.2c04789[2] https://neurosciencenews.com/alzheimers-smart-patch-22274/
