Biosensors for cardiac biomarkers detection: a review

The cardiovascular disease (CVD) is considered as a major threat to global health. Therefore, there is a growing demand for a range of portable, rapid and low cost biosensing devices for the detection of CVD. Biosensors can play an important role in the early diagnosis of CVD without having to rely on hospital visits where expensive and time-consuming laboratory tests are recommended. Over the last decade, many biosensors have been developed to detect a wide range of cardiac marker to reduce the costs for healthcare. One of the major challenges is to find a way of predicting the risk that an individual can suffer from CVD. There has been considerable interest in finding diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers that can be detected in blood and predict CVD risk. Of these, C-reactive protein (CRP) is the best known biomarker followed by cardiac troponin I or T (cTnI/T), myoglobin, lipoprotein-associated phospholipase A(2), interlukin-6 (IL-6), interlukin-1 (IL-1), low-density lipoprotein (LDL), myeloperoxidase (MPO) and tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) has been used to predict cardiovascular events. This review provides an overview of the available biosensor platforms for the detection of various CVD markers and considerations of future prospects for the technology are addressed

A colorimetric CMOS-based platform for rapid total serum cholesterol quantification

Elevated cholesterol levels are associated with a greater risk of developing cardiovascular disease and other illnesses, making it a prime candidate for detection on a disposable biosensor for rapid point of care diagnostics. One of the methods to quantify cholesterol levels in human blood serum uses an optically mediated enzyme assay and a bench top spectrophotometer. The bulkiness and power hungry nature of the equipment limits its usage to laboratories. Here, we present a new disposable sensing platform that is based on a complementary metal oxide semiconductor process for total cholesterol quantification in pure blood serum. The platform that we implemented comprises readily mass-manufacturable components that exploit colorimetric changes of cholesterol oxidase and cholesterol esterase reactions. We have shown that our quantification results are comparable to that obtained by a bench top spectrophotometer. Using the implemented device, we have measured cholesterol concentration in human blood serum as low as 29 μM with a limit of detection at 13 μM, which is approximately 400 times lower than average physiological range, implying that our device also has the potential to be used for applications that require greater sensitivity

Distributed environmental monitoring

With increasingly ubiquitous use of web-based technologies in society today, autonomous sensor networks represent the future in large-scale information acquisition for applications ranging from environmental monitoring to in vivo sensing. This chapter presents a range of on-going projects with an emphasis on environmental sensing; relevant literature pertaining to sensor networks is reviewed, validated sensing applications are described and the contribution of high-resolution temporal data to better decision-making is discussed

The Boston University Photonics Center annual report 2014-2015

This repository item contains an annual report that summarizes activities of the Boston University Photonics Center in the 2014-2015 academic year. The report provides quantitative and descriptive information regarding photonics programs in education, interdisciplinary research, business innovation, and technology development. The Boston University Photonics Center (BUPC) is an interdisciplinary hub for education, research, scholarship, innovation, and technology development associated with practical uses of light.This has been a good year for the Photonics Center. In the following pages, you will see that the center’s faculty received prodigious honors and awards, generated more than 100 notable scholarly publications in the leading journals in our field, and attracted $18.6M in new research grants/contracts. Faculty and staff also expanded their efforts in education and training, and were awarded two new National Science Foundation– sponsored sites for Research Experiences for Undergraduates and for Teachers. As a community, we hosted a compelling series of distinguished invited speakers, and emphasized the theme of Advanced Materials by Design for the 21st Century at our annual symposium. We continued to support the National Photonics Initiative, and are a part of a New York–based consortium that won the competition for a new photonics- themed node in the National Network of Manufacturing Institutes. Highlights of our research achievements for the year include an ambitious new DoD-sponsored grant for Multi-Scale Multi-Disciplinary Modeling of Electronic Materials led by Professor Enrico Bellotti, continued support of our NIH-sponsored Center for Innovation in Point of Care Technologies for the Future of Cancer Care led by Professor Catherine Klapperich, a new award for Personalized Chemotherapy Through Rapid Monitoring with Wearable Optics led by Assistant Professor Darren Roblyer, and a new award from DARPA to conduct research on Calligraphy to Build Tunable Optical Metamaterials led by Professor Dave Bishop. We were also honored to receive an award from the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center to develop a biophotonics laboratory in our Business Innovation Center

Fully integrated digital microfluidics platform for automated immunoassay; a versatile tool for rapid, specific detection of a wide range of pathogens

© 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. This manuscript is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Licence http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.With the tangible threat posed by the release of chemical and biological warfare (CBW) agents, detection of airborne pathogens is a critical military and security concern. Recent air sampling techniques developed for biocollection take advantage of Electrowetting on Dielectric (EWOD) to recover material, producing highly concentrated droplet samples. Bespoke EWOD-based digital microfluidics platforms are very well suited to take full advantage of the microlitre concentrated droplet resulting from this recovery process. In this paper we present a free-standing, fully automated DMF platform for immunoassay. Using this system, we demonstrate the automated detection of four classes of CBW agent simulant biomolecules and organisms each representing credible threat agents. Taking advantage of the full magnetic separation process with antibody-bound microbeads, rapid and complete separation of specific target antigen can be achieved with minimal washing steps allowing for very rapid detection. Here, we report clear detection of four categories of antigens achieved with assay completion times of between six and ten minutes. Detection of HSA, Bacillus atrophaeus (BG spores), MS2 bacteriophage and Escherichia coli are demonstrated with estimated limit of detection of respectively 30 ng ml -1, 4 × 10 4 cfu ml -1, 10 6 pfu ml -1 and 2 × 10 7 cfu ml -1. The fully-integrated portable platform described in this paper is highly compatible with the next generation of electrowetting-coupled air samplers and thus shows strong potential toward future in-field deployable biodetection systems and could have key implication in life-changing sectors such as healthcare, environment or food security.Peer reviewe

The future of laboratory medicine - A 2014 perspective.

Predicting the future is a difficult task. Not surprisingly, there are many examples and assumptions that have proved to be wrong. This review surveys the many predictions, beginning in 1887, about the future of laboratory medicine and its sub-specialties such as clinical chemistry and molecular pathology. It provides a commentary on the accuracy of the predictions and offers opinions on emerging technologies, economic factors and social developments that may play a role in shaping the future of laboratory medicine

The Boston University Photonics Center annual report 2013-2014

This repository item contains an annual report that summarizes activities of the Boston University Photonics Center in the 2013-2014 academic year. The report provides quantitative and descriptive information regarding photonics programs in education, interdisciplinary research, business innovation, and technology development. The Boston University Photonics Center (BUPC) is an interdisciplinary hub for education, research, scholarship, innovation, and technology development associated with practical uses of light.This annual report summarizes activities of the Boston University Photonics Center in the 2013–2014 academic year.This has been a good year for the Photonics Center. In the following pages, you will see that the center’s faculty received prodigious honors and awards, generated more than 100 notable scholarly publications in the leading journals in our field, and attracted $14.5M in new research grants and contracts this year. Faculty and staff also expanded their efforts in education and training, through National Science Foundation–sponsored sites for Research Experiences for Undergraduates and for Teachers. As a community, we hosted a compelling series of distinguished invited speakers, and emphasized the theme of Innovations at the Intersections of Micro/Nanofabrication Technology, Biology, and Biomedicine at our annual Future of Light Symposium. We took a leadership role in running national workshops on emerging photonic fields, including an OSA Incubator on Controlled Light Propagation through Complex Media, and an NSF Workshop on Noninvasive Imaging of Brain Function. Highlights of our research achievements for the year include a distinctive Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) for Assistant Professor Xue Han, an ambitious new DoD-sponsored grant for Multi-Scale Multi-Disciplinary Modeling of Electronic Materials led by Professor Enrico Bellotti, launch of our NIH-sponsored Center for Innovation in Point of Care Technologies for the Future of Cancer Care led by Professor Cathy Klapperich, and successful completion of the ambitious IARPA-funded contract for Next Generation Solid Immersion Microscopy for Fault Isolation in Back-Side Circuit Analysis led by Professor Bennett Goldberg. These three programs, which represent more than$20M in research funding for the University, are indicative of the breadth of Photonics Center research interests: from fundamental modeling of optoelectronic materials to practical development of cancer diagnostics, from exciting new discoveries in optogenetics for understanding brain function to the achievement of world-record resolution in semiconductor circuit microscopy. Our community welcomed an auspicious cohort of new faculty members, including a newly hired assistant professor and a newly hired professor (and Chair of the Mechanical Engineering Department). The Industry/University Cooperative Research Center—the centerpiece of our translational biophotonics program—continues to focus on advancing the health care and medical device industries, and has entered its fourth year of operation with a strong record of achievement and with the support of an enthusiastic industrial membership base

The Boston University Photonics Center annual report 2014-2015

This repository item contains an annual report that summarizes activities of the Boston University Photonics Center in the 2014-2015 academic year. The report provides quantitative and descriptive information regarding photonics programs in education, interdisciplinary research, business innovation, and technology development. The Boston University Photonics Center (BUPC) is an interdisciplinary hub for education, research, scholarship, innovation, and technology development associated with practical uses of light.This has been a good year for the Photonics Center. In the following pages, you will see that the center’s faculty received prodigious honors and awards, generated more than 100 notable scholarly publications in the leading journals in our field, and attracted $18.6M in new research grants/contracts. Faculty and staff also expanded their efforts in education and training, and were awarded two new National Science Foundation– sponsored sites for Research Experiences for Undergraduates and for Teachers. As a community, we hosted a compelling series of distinguished invited speakers, and emphasized the theme of Advanced Materials by Design for the 21st Century at our annual symposium. We continued to support the National Photonics Initiative, and are a part of a New York–based consortium that won the competition for a new photonics- themed node in the National Network of Manufacturing Institutes. Highlights of our research achievements for the year include an ambitious new DoD-sponsored grant for Multi-Scale Multi-Disciplinary Modeling of Electronic Materials led by Professor Enrico Bellotti, continued support of our NIH-sponsored Center for Innovation in Point of Care Technologies for the Future of Cancer Care led by Professor Catherine Klapperich, a new award for Personalized Chemotherapy Through Rapid Monitoring with Wearable Optics led by Assistant Professor Darren Roblyer, and a new award from DARPA to conduct research on Calligraphy to Build Tunable Optical Metamaterials led by Professor Dave Bishop. We were also honored to receive an award from the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center to develop a biophotonics laboratory in our Business Innovation Center

Fully Integrated Biochip Platforms for Advanced Healthcare

Recent advances in microelectronics and biosensors are enabling developments of innovative biochips for advanced healthcare by providing fully integrated platforms for continuous monitoring of a large set of human disease biomarkers. Continuous monitoring of several human metabolites can be addressed by using fully integrated and minimally invasive devices located in the sub-cutis, typically in the peritoneal region. This extends the techniques of continuous monitoring of glucose currently being pursued with diabetic patients. However, several issues have to be considered in order to succeed in developing fully integrated and minimally invasive implantable devices. These innovative devices require a high-degree of integration, minimal invasive surgery, long-term biocompatibility, security and privacy in data transmission, high reliability, high reproducibility, high specificity, low detection limit and high sensitivity. Recent advances in the field have already proposed possible solutions for several of these issues. The aim of the present paper is to present a broad spectrum of recent results and to propose future directions of development in order to obtain fully implantable systems for the continuous monitoring of the human metabolism in advanced healthcare applications