Medical applications, biosensors

Enzyme electrodes for medical applications Biosensors Fundamentals, Technologies and Applications ed F Scheiler and R Schmid (VCH) pp 11-8... 

The most important and most studied applications of enzyme biosensors are to detect and monitor blood glucose, followed by lactate, because of the medical applications of such sensors. Thus, by initially detailing the development of glucose biosensors we can better understand and trace the general development of enzyme biosensors containing polymeric electron transfer systems. 

Table 23.1 lists a number of companies actively developing and/or marketing chemical or biosensors. Applications for these sensors are diverse, from medical applications to environmental monitoring and food quality determinations. This diversity illustrates the generic nature common to most chemical and biosensors. Once the basic transduction and electronic components of the sensor have been developed and manufactured, the application of the sensor to measurements for a wide range of analytes is only limited by the specificity and selectivity of its active chemicaWjiological surface. Thus while the initial development of chemical and biosensors requires high-risk investment, successful development of the basic sensor can result in a family of products applicable over broad markets. 

For medical applications, in our view, mechanical resonances (see Section 9.4.2.3) present barriers to antibody interaction such that these soft elastic biomaterials exhibit a remarkable biocompatibility otherwise considered impossible for foreign proteins. As a specific example for medical and nonmedical applications, the author believes that the finding of mechanical resonances, so innovative as to be denounced as artifact by those constrained by the idols of the present, constitutes opportunities for the future ranging from biosensors capable of single molecule detection to hearing protection and underwater sound absorption. 

Recent progresses in micro- and nanotechnology have led to the design of implantable, swallowable, wearable, or portable wireless biosensors to continuously monitor and detect important physiological parameters. The miniaturization and integration of biosensors, readout circuits, embedded microcontrollers, and wireless transceivers on a single chip have opened the way for new possibilities in medical applications. 

One of the major challenges in the medical application of POC biosensors is to make possible the use of these devices to diagnose and monitor severe diseases like cancer. Hence, at the start of the chapter, it is important to define cancer and its types to show how each cancer can be detected using POC biosensors with some approaches in the development of medical biosensors for cancer detection. 

---