Blood, sweat, and tears: developing clinically relevant protein biosensors for integrated body fluid analysis

Abstract

Biosensors are being developed to provide rapid, quantitative, diagnostic information to clinicians in order to help guide patient treatment, without the need for centralised laboratory assays. The success of glucose monitoring is a key example of where technology innovation has met a clinical need at multiple levelsfrom the pathology laboratory all the way to the patient's home. However, few other biosensor devices are currently in routine use. Here we review the challenges and opportunities regarding the integration of biosensor techniques into body fluid sampling approaches, with emphasis on the point-of-care setting.

Evaluation of lacrimal production, osmolarity, crystallization, proteomic profile, and biochemistry of capuchin monkeys’ tear film

“…42,[46][47][48] Thus, the results found in this study for tears and blood serum are within the range of values described in the literature. 49,50 Total proteins in the tear films of humans and chimpanzees have been quantified, 43 with no difference in the observed values. This differs from our results, in which CM tears had decreased protein amounts.…”

Wearable salivary uric acid mouthguard biosensor with integrated wireless electronics

“…Wearable sensors have been receiving considerable recent attention because of their great promise for on-body monitoring of a wide range of relevant parameters for health, fitness, and biomedicine applications (Ghafar-Zadeh et al, 2015; Andreu Perez et al, 2015; Soh et al, 2015; Corrie et al, 2015). While the majority of existing wearable technologies focus on monitoring physical parameters (e.g., motion, respiration rate, etc.)…”

Electrochemical Lateral Flow Devices: Towards Rapid Immunomagnetic Assays

“…Electrochemistry provides fast, sensitive and relatively inexpensive detection using measurement equipment and transducers that are robust and easy to miniaturize, and a number of enzymatic point‐of‐care (POC) electrochemical devices are well established in the market . In contrast, diagnostic immunosensors face challenges such as the need to integrate multi‐step and multi‐reagent immunoassays, detection of analytes that may be present at very low concentrations, or potential interferences caused by non‐target compounds present in complex clinical samples …”

“…[2] In contrast, diagnostic immunosensors face challenges such as the need to integrate multi-step and multi-reagent immunoassays, detection of analytes that may be present at very low concentrations, or potential interferences caused by non-target compounds present in complex clinical samples. [3] Immunomagnetic sensing relies on magnetic beads (MB) modified with antibodies (Ab). [4] MB are attracted by external magnetic fields and can be easily re-suspended in solution when the magnetic field is removed or switched-off.…”