Micro- and nanobiosensors—state of the art and trends

Abstract

Recent progress in microsystem technologies for creating small, integrated and reliable microelectronic devices and microtransducers in combination with biological sensing elements has raised the expectation to get a comprehensive insight into dynamic cellular metabolic events and subsequently a complete understanding of the metabolism of human biology. Such micro- and nanobiosensor tools in combination with appropriate microfluidics enable the simultaneous description and moreover monitoring of gene, protein expression and metabolic states in a biosystem. This knowledge will lead to new future therapies and pharmaceutical treatments. Furthermore, with such methods and microdevices a new direct combination of diagnostics and immediately starting therapy can be established which is called theranostic. There are a lot of challenging problems to be overcome to reach this goal: microsystems monitoring of physical parameters in biological systems is well established, whereas chemo- and biosensors are available for only a few parameters and mainly as in vitro devices. Gene arrays entered the research market but are up to now not in clinical practice. Protein arrays are in a developmental state with promising results, but far from a mature reproducible state. For getting insights into metabolic events intra- and extracellularly, some new and promising technologies are under research and will undoubtedly revolutionize systems biology but only in the longer run. As a conclusion, it can be stated that new methods stemming from microelectronics and biological technologies are now entering the world of chemical and biological analytics as well as clinics to offer clinicians new theranostic tools in the future.

Technology life cycle analysis method based on patent documents

“…Therefore, the fabrication technology is one of the pacing technologies of NBS. In this stage, a lot of challenging problems must be overcome, such as enhancement of gene array and protein array, and some new and promising technologies are still under research [33].…”

Wireless Implantable Electronic Platform for Chronic Fluorescent-Based Biosensors

“…The availability of a reliable long-term blood glucose level (BGL) sensor would have a disruptive impact on healthcare and diabetes management, considering that over 5% of the world's population suffers from diabetes [9] and this number is increasing rapidly [10]. Wireless electronic systems have been suggested for amperometric [11], [12] and near-infrared spectroscopy based [13] glucose sensors.…”

Sol-gel technology in enzymatic electrochemical biosensors for clinical analysis

“…In a larger acceptation, a biosensor can be defined as a compact, self-contained, reversible, integrated bioanalytical device, having a biological sensitive component or a biological derivative directly connected to a compatible physicochemical transducer. Together, they transpose the concentration of a certain analyte or a group of similar analytes, in a measurable response, and are connected to a processor of the provided electronic signal (Matrubutham & Sayler, 1998;Rogers & Mascini, 2009;Sing & Choi, 2009;Thévenot et al, 1999;Turner et al, 1987;Urban, 2009). According to the standard definition given by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), a biosensor is an integrated self-contained receptor-transducer device, able to provide selectively quantitative or semi-quantitative analytical information using a biologic recognition element, which is in direct spatial contact with a transducer element (Justino et al, 2010;Thévenot et al, 1999), or a device based on specific biochemical reaction catalyzed by isolated enzymes, immunosystems, tissues, organelles, or whole cells to detect chemical compounds, usually by electric, thermal or optical signals, respectively (Nayak et al, 2009).…”