Biosensor Technology

🚀 A Leap Forward in #Wearable Biosensing: Bioinspired #Sweat Monitoring for Multiday #Metabolic Analysis A new Science Magazine study introduces BMS3 — a bioinspired microfluidic sweat sensor that makes continuous, noninvasive biochemical monitoring a reality. 🌿 Nature-inspired engineering: • Lotus leaves & pitcher plants inspired Janus membranes + graded microchannels for efficient sweat harvesting and transport. 🧪 Breakthrough performance: • Sustains sweat collection for 48+ hours after just one brief iontophoresis session. • Tracks uric acid, xanthine, and alcohol — key markers for gout & metabolic health. 👩⚕️ Clinical validation: • Tested in both healthy participants and gout patients. • Differentiates normal vs. pathological states. • Provides real-time therapeutic feedback (e.g., allopurinol response). 💡 Why it matters: This bioinspired wearable overcomes longstanding challenges in sweat sensing and brings us closer to practical precision medicine — enabling clinicians and researchers to capture the body’s biochemical dynamics in real time, across daily life. 👏 Congratulations to Soyoung Shin, Ruixiao Liu, Yiran (Isabella) Yang, Ph.D., José A. Lasalde-Ramírez, Canran Wang, Zhaoping Li, MD, PhD, Wei Gao , and the entire Caltech team on this remarkable accomplishment! 📌 Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/eQsxBU7j #WearableTechnology #Biosensors #PrecisionMedicine #DigitalHealth #MetabolicHealth #ClinicalResearch #BiomedicalEngineering

Glowing Biological Quantum Sensor Could Track How Cells Form January 3, 2025 Why It Matters: A breakthrough in biological quantum sensing could revolutionize how we monitor cellular processes, detect diseases at early stages, and study the inner workings of living systems. Researchers have developed a quantum sensor based on a glowing protein that can be produced directly by living cells, potentially offering unprecedented precision in biomedical monitoring. What Happened: Scientists have engineered a quantum sensor from a glowing protein derived from bioluminescent jellyfish. Unlike traditional quantum sensors, which rely on artificial diamond-based defects to measure minute magnetic fields or temperature changes, this new sensor can be naturally synthesized by living cells themselves. Traditional quantum sensors embedded in synthetic diamonds have already shown their potential by detecting magnetic fields inside rat hearts or neuronal activity in mice. However, these devices are limited by their inability to target specific cellular processes with precision. The new protein-based quantum sensor addresses this limitation. The protein’s quantum mechanical property of spin interacts with external magnetic fields, causing it to emit measurable bioluminescent signals. This allows scientists to monitor changes in temperature, magnetic fields, or cellular activity at an incredibly fine resolution—right down to the level of individual proteins within living cells. Why It’s Important: 1. Precision Monitoring: The glowing protein can act as a precise quantum sensor, capable of tracking minuscule changes in a cell’s environment, including temperature, pressure, and magnetic fields. How It Works: The protein sensor leverages the quantum property of spin, which interacts with magnetic fields in its surroundings. This interaction alters the bioluminescence emitted by the protein, producing signals that can be precisely measured. Since the protein can be produced by the cell itself through genetic engineering, it eliminates the need for invasive synthetic sensor implantation. The Big Picture: This innovation could mark the beginning of a new era in biomedical research and healthcare, where cellular activity is monitored with quantum precision. From understanding how stem cells differentiate to detecting cancer at its earliest stages, glowing biological quantum sensors could unlock insights that were previously unimaginable. For now, scientists are working to ensure the protein sensors remain stable and reliable under varying cellular conditions. If successful, they may soon become standard tools in biology and medicine, transforming how we diagnose, monitor, and treat diseases at the cellular level.

The future of diagnostics was supposed to be “less invasive.” Nutromics looked at that brief and said, “𝐂𝐨𝐨𝐥. 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐟 𝐰𝐞 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐥𝐚𝐛?” Their wearable lab-on-a-patch isn’t another fitness gimmick counting steps or guilt-tracking your sleep. This patch uses 𝐃𝐍𝐀-𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐢𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐫𝐬 to continuously monitor multiple biomarkers... not one token metric to make investors happy. We’re talking ICU-grade monitoring on the skin. Real-time signals for sepsis risk. Dynamic antibiotic dosing. Metabolic markers that normally need vials, tubes, centrifuges and a very patient phlebotomist. The brilliance here is the stack: 1. 𝐃𝐍𝐀 𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐫 𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐫𝐬 that bind selectively to target molecules 2. 𝐌𝐢𝐜𝐫𝐨𝐟𝐥𝐮𝐢𝐝𝐢𝐜 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐥𝐬 that analyse biomarkers without blood draws 3. 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐮𝐨𝐮𝐬 𝐬𝐚𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 instead of “once every six hours when staff has time” 4. 𝐂𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐝-𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐩 𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐚 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦𝐬 that can actually inform clinical decisions, not just dashboards If this works at scale, hospitals won’t just get better data.... they’ll get 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥-𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐩𝐡𝐲𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐲, which is the holy grail of critical care. Imagine sepsis caught hours earlier. Imagine antibiotic dosing that reacts to biology, not guesswork. Imagine remote monitoring where the patch becomes the lab. While most wearables are busy telling you your “stress score,” Nutromics is out here quietly rewriting the diagnostic playbook. Deep tech isn’t coming. It’s sticking itself to your skin. #MedTech #DigitalHealth #Wearables #Biosensors #HealthcareInnovation #RemoteMonitoring

Switzerland: EPFL scientists build first self-illuminating biosensor. Engineers harnessed quantum physics to detect the presence of biomolecules without the need for an external light source, overcoming a significant obstacle to the use of optical biosensors in healthcare and environmental monitoring settings. Participating institutions: ETH Zurich, ICFO (Spain), and Yonsei University (Korea). 26 June 2025. Excerpt: Optical biosensors use light waves as a probe to detect molecules, and are essential for precise medical diagnostics, personalized medicine, and environmental monitoring. Their performance is dramatically enhanced if the sensors can focus light waves down to the nanometer scale – small enough to detect proteins or amino acids, for example – using nanophotonic structures that ‘squeeze’ light at the surface of a tiny chip. The generation and detection of light for nanophotonic biosensors requires bulky, expensive equipment that greatly limits their use in rapid diagnostics or point-of-care settings. The design of the team’s nanostructure creates just the right conditions for an electron passing upward through it to cross a barrier of aluminum oxide and arrive at an ultrathin layer of gold. In the process, the electron transfers some of its energy to a plasmon, which then emits a photon. Their design ensures the intensity and spectrum of light changes in response to contact with biomolecules, resulting in a powerful method for extremely sensitive, real-time, label-free detection. Key: “Tests showed our self-illuminating biosensor can detect amino acids and polymers at picogram concentrations – that’s one-trillionth of a gram – rivaling the most advanced sensors available today,” says Bionanophotonic Systems Laboratory head Hatice Altug. Refer to the enclosed press release further information. The work has been published in Nature Photonics (26 June) in collaboration with researchers at ETH Zurich, ICFO (Spain), and Yonsei University (Korea). https://lnkd.in/eC8SqVh8

Biosensors—devices that use biological molecules to detect the presence of a target substance—have enormous potential for detecting disease biomarkers, molecules-in-action in diverse biological processes, or toxins and other harmful substances in the environment. One of the more common types, fluorescent biosensors, consists of a target-binding biomolecule attached to a probe molecule that emits fluorescent light. However, fluorescent biosensors are typically low-contrast reagents because their fluorescent probes are always "on," and un-bound biosensor molecules need to be washed away before an accurate signal can be detected. A major step forward are high-contrast "binding-activated fluorescent biosensors" (nanosensors) that only light up when they bind to their target molecule, but creating such nanosensors is challenging as effective target-binding and a fluorescence on-switch need to be combined in a small molecular package that also can be efficiently delivered to various types of samples, and cost-efficiently manufactured at scale. Now, a collaborative research team at the Wyss Institute at Harvard University, Harvard Medical School (HMS), MIT, and the University of Edinburgh, UK, has developed a synthetic biology platform to streamline the discovery, molecular evolution, and cost-effective manufacturing of small and highly efficient nanosensors that can detect specific proteins, peptides, and small molecules by increasing their fluorescence up to 100-fold in less than a second. As a key component, the platform uses new fluorogenic amino acids (FgAAs) that can be encoded into target-binding small protein sequences (binders) with the help of an innovative methodology that enables the in vitro expansion of the genetic code. Through a process of high-throughput sensor screening, validation, and directed evolution, the platform enables the rapid and cost-effective transformation of protein binders into high-contrast nanosensors for a wide range of applications in fundamental research, environmental monitoring, medical diagnostics and augmented therapeutics. The findings are published in Nature Communications. https://lnkd.in/gmtwPKXG

𝗗𝗼 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗳𝗲𝗲𝗹 𝗪𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘂𝗽 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀? Because this breakthrough just raised the bar significantly. Researchers have developed a wearable device that monitors glucose levels through sweat – and it doesn't stop there. This disposable patch integrates real-time glucose monitoring with automated transdermal drug delivery for diabetes management. 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲'𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗺𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀: ✅ 𝗡𝗼𝗻-𝗶𝗻𝘃𝗮𝘀𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 – No more painful finger pricks ✅ 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗻𝘂𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗰𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 – Real-time glucose data from sweat analysis ✅ 𝗦𝗺𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗱𝗿𝘂𝗴 𝗱𝗲𝗹𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 – Automated treatment response when glucose levels spike ✅ 𝗪𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 & 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗽𝗼𝘀𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 – Practical for everyday use This isn't science fiction. It's soft bioelectronics on human skin, creating a closed-loop system that monitors AND treats diabetes simultaneously. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗶𝗴𝗴𝗲𝗿 𝗽𝗶𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲? This technology represents the convergence of AI, wearables, and connected care – three pillars transforming healthcare delivery. We're moving from reactive treatment to proactive, personalized health management. For healthcare organizations exploring digital transformation, innovations like this answer the question: wearables aren't just living up to expectations – they're exceeding them by becoming active treatment devices, not just passive monitors. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗾𝘂𝗶𝗰𝗸𝗹𝘆 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝘄𝗲 𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 𝘁𝗼 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹-𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱 𝗰𝗮𝗿𝗲? What's your take? Are non-invasive biosensors the next frontier in chronic disease management? 📖 Research: Science Advances (DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1601314) For more Wearables News and Expertise follow João Bocas #DigitalHealth #AIinHealthcare #Wearables #DiabetesCare #HealthTech #ConnectedCare #Innovation #HealthcareTransformation

🧬 Scientists are developing an ultra-low-cost DNA biosensor that could transform how diseases like cancer and HIV are detected worldwide. The experimental technology uses specially engineered gold-printed electrodes to identify specific genetic markers from a tiny fluid sample, delivering results in less than 30 minutes. Unlike traditional molecular testing, which often requires expensive laboratory equipment and trained personnel, this portable biosensor could reportedly be produced for under $1 per test. If successfully validated through clinical trials, the innovation could make advanced disease screening more accessible in rural communities, low-resource healthcare settings, and regions where laboratory infrastructure remains limited. Early detection plays a critical role in improving outcomes for conditions such as cancer and HIV, where timely diagnosis can significantly increase treatment success and survival rates. Researchers believe low-cost point-of-care diagnostics like this may represent the next generation of precision medicine, bringing laboratory-level genetic testing directly to patients instead of requiring patients to travel to laboratories. While the technology is still undergoing clinical validation and regulatory review, early findings have generated significant interest across biotechnology and global health communities. 📚 Sources: Nature Biomedical Engineering, ACS Sensors, and published research on electrochemical DNA biosensors. ⚠️ Disclaimer: This post is for educational purposes only and should not be considered medical advice. Experimental diagnostic technologies require further clinical testing and regulatory approval before widespread clinical use. #CancerResearch #HIVAwareness #DNATechnology #Biosensor #MedicalInnovation #Biotechnology #HealthcareInnovation #PrecisionMedicine #Diagnostics #GlobalHealth #FutureOfMedicine #HealthTech #CancerDetection #HIVTesting #ScienceNews

New in Nature Biotechnology, we discuss the convergence of mass spectrometry and wearable biosensing for noninvasive health monitoring. Biomolecular profiling has traditionally relied on invasive sampling and centralized lab analysis. Meanwhile, wearable sensors enable real-time chemical sensing but currently track only a limited set of biomarkers. In this work, we explore how MS-based molecular discovery and wearable biosensors can complement each other—with untargeted metabolomics and proteomics identifying new biomarkers from accessible biofluids (sweat, saliva, tears, interstitial fluid), and wearable technologies enabling continuous, real-world monitoring. Nature Portfolio Read the paper: https://lnkd.in/gUiCTXvZ Congrats to Moon Ju Kim Jose Lasalde Wenzheng Heng Caltech!

More than a decade ago, we filed our first patent with a simple but ambitious vision: to enable reliable molecular sensing of human metabolism through breath. Today, I am delighted to see this journey culminate in our latest publication in Device, describing a handheld breath acetone sensor that is robust, reproducible, and simple to use in home and clinical settings. Research article: https://lnkd.in/ejAXvKCr ETH News: https://lnkd.in/eSCYEFmk Nature: https://lnkd.in/eaknZjXN C&EN: https://lnkd.in/eGi9qGyb The Times: https://lnkd.in/e4iYsKWr What began with the design of functional nanomaterials and sensor surfaces gradually evolved into several interconnected research directions. We sought to (1) fundamentally understand how acetone interacts with sensor surfaces and how these molecular interactions are translated into stable electrical signals (https://lnkd.in/e_yHPbAm), (2) engineer sensing systems with selective filter architectures that effectively eliminate confounding compounds while preserving the target analyte (https://lnkd.in/e8DpF64V), and (3) translate these advances into the first small-cohort human studies investigating metabolic changes during ketogenic dieting, intermittent fasting, exercise (https://lnkd.in/ejybxESp), and disease-related alterations (https://lnkd.in/eWC2mN_4). I am equally proud that this research did not stop at academic publications. Through our spin-off Alivion, the technology successfully made the transition from university-based discovery to a commercialized medical device. None of this would have been possible without outstanding collaborators over many years. Congratulations to our co-authors Simone Hersberger, Lara Schmid, Fabienne Kappeler (ETH Zurich), Jan van den Broek (Alivion) and Gerber Philipp (Universitätsspital Zürich & Universität Zürich | University of Zurich). This pathway perfectly illustrates what excites me most about bio- / chemical sensing for health applications: connecting materials science, interface engineering, device design, physiology, clinical validation, and implementation into technologies that can ultimately improve prevention and patient care. These early proof-of-concept studies have now evolved into multicenter clinical trials evaluating breath acetone as a non-invasive biomarker across diverse patient populations. Today, my team together with many collaborators works on sensors for other metabolic tracers in breath, interstitial fluid and urine. 

Nature Chemical Biology paper (23 July 2026) introduces a directed evolution platform that reprograms bacterial transcription factors (TFs) into enantioselective biosensors, enabling fluorescence-based detection of enzyme chirality at a scale chromatography cannot match. 🔅 Pharmaceutical manufacturing often requires a specific molecular mirror image, which a class of enzymes called imine reductases (IREDs) can generate by reducing an achiral imine to a chiral amine. Measuring which enantioner an enzyme makes has required chiral liquid chromatography, consuming 11 days and 16 liters of solvent for 10K candidates, while mass spectrometry cannot distinguish mirror images. This work evolves bacterial TFs that sense one enantiomeric product and switch on a GFP or RFP reporter, making enzyme stereoselectivity readable by FACS. Using growth-coupled deep sequencing, the team profiled 309,461 RamR TF variants against both mirror-image amine products and the achiral imine precursor in solifenacin synthesis. 🔅 Gene shuffling, recombining RamR with related family members, yielded 20 to 26% of variants exceeding wild-type fold induction versus 1 to 2% from site-saturation and 5% from random mutagenesis. Top sensors achieved more than 50-fold enantioselectivity, greater than 140-fold dynamic range, and EC50 as low as 2 µmol/L with 56-fold selectivity over non-cognate ligands. Six crystal structures at 1.8 to 4.0 Å reveal the mechanism: bulky Met185 and Phe156 sidechains block the wrong-handed ligand, C135E creates a salt bridge with the positively charged amine of one enantiomer, and C135R contacts the neutral imine of the precursor. 🔅 Paired biosensor plasmids screened approximately 8,000 IRED variants in 30 minutes by FACS versus 11 days by LC-MS, with biosensor-reported enantiomeric excess correlating at r² = 0.94. A 32,000-member library at three active-site positions yielded IR35_C4 (P130A, N177E, M184W) with inverted enantioselectivity and 86% ee for the R-product. The SELIS1 single-plasmid circuit, completing each round in one week, then generated biosensors for tetrahydropapaverine enantiomers relevant to cisatracurium manufacturing, with 51-fold and 16-fold EC50 selectivity differences for S- and R-selective sensors. 👉 Limitation: The biosensor detection floor near 5 µmol/L excludes poorly active IREDs, a gap LC-MS does not have. Enzyme expression is not normalized in the FACS workflow, potentially masking highly selective but weakly expressed variants. All targets are structurally related aromatic amines within the RamR pocket, leaving extension to transaminases, ketone reductases, or non-aromatic substrates undemonstrated. 📑 Full text: https://lnkd.in/gwCV-9xj 📑 Related patent: https://lnkd.in/gmpR-Yks #Biocatalysis #SyntheticBiology #ChiralChemistry