Engineers have developed a technique for inkjet printing arrays of special nanoparticles that enables the mass production of long-lasting wearable sweat sensors. These sensors could be used to monitor a variety of biomarkers, such as vitamins, hormones, metabolites, and medications, in real time, providing patients and their physicians with the ability to continually follow changes in the levels of those molecules.
Wearable biosensors that incorporate the new nanoparticles have been successfully used to monitor metabolites in patients suffering from long COVID and the levels of chemotherapy drugs in cancer patients.
The team describes the nanoparticles as core–shell cubic nanoparticles. The cubes are formed in a solution that includes the molecule that the researchers want to track — for example, vitamin C. As the monomers spontaneously assemble to form a polymer, the target molecule is trapped inside the cubic nanoparticles. Next, a solvent is used to specifically remove the vitamin C molecules, leaving behind a molecularly imprinted polymer shell dotted with holes that have shapes exactly matching that of the vitamin C molecules — akin to artificial antibodies that selectively recognize the shapes of only particular molecules.
The new core–shell nanoparticles are highly versatile and are used in printing sensor arrays that measure levels of multiple amino acids, metabolites, hormones, or drugs in sweat or bodily fluids simply by using multiple nanoparticle “inks” in a single array. (Image credit: Caltech)
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