Minireview: Smart tattoo, Microneedle, Point-Of-care, and Phone-Based Biosensors for Medical Screening, Diagnosis, and Monitoring

ABSTRACT

Advances in nanotechnologies have led to the development of nanoscale biosensors with exquisite sensitivity and versatility as their ultimate goal is to detect any biochemical and biophysical signals associated with a specific disease at the level of a single molecule or cell. The ability to detect disease-associated biomolecules is essential not only for disease diagnostics in the clinical settings but also for biomedical research involving drug discovery and development. Portable, faster, and low-cost devices are highly preferred for replacing time-consuming centralized laboratory analysis. The reduction in sensor size provides great versatility, but extreme miniaturization while keeping intact the selectivity and sensitivity characteristics to biosensors must be achieved. The sensitivity of biosensors can be increased using different nanomaterials like carbon nanotubes, graphene, and nanoparticles while the selectivity is gained when biomolecules are involved (enzymes, antibodies, aptamers). Several examples of tattoo, microneedle, and smartphone-based sensors as screening, diagnosing, and monitoring tools, representing the latest approaches for minimal invasive devices in this dynamic field of research, are presented.

KEYWORDS:

• Electrochemical sensors
• microneedle sensors
• point-of-care devices
• smartphone
• tattoo sensors

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful for the financial support to “Iuliu Hatieganu” University of Medicine and Pharmacy Cluj-Napoca for project number PD 5200/49/01.03.2017.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a grant of the Romanian National Authority for Scientific Research and Innovation, CNCS/CCCDI - UEFISCDI, project number PN-III-P3-3.1.-PM-RO-FR-2016-0003, within PNCDI III.