Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Doutor em Química SustentávelCardiovascular diseases (CVD) are top-killer chronic diseases, accounting for al-most half of the European deaths in 2010 (Eurostat data). Most recent statistics in Portuguese territory confirm this scenario, with cardiovascular diseases killing about 11 persons per 100000 inhabitants. Reducing these numbers is urgent and requires early, quick and efficient diagnostic of the specific heart condition.
Thus, the main goal of this proposal is to develop a low cost sensing-devices based on newly synthesized sensory biomaterials for screening cardiac bi-omarkers in point-of-care. These were applied to screen the conventional bi-omarkers of clinical interest, all peptides in nature. These include troponin T (TnT), creatine kinase isoenzyme (CK-MB) and myoglobin (Myo). This was achieved by means of novel and low cost biosensing materials that were designed to display good selectivity to each biomarker, assembled on nanostructured sens-ing units and tested on serum samples. The design of novel biosensing materials consisted on synthesizing plastic antibodies by means of novel molecular im-printing (MI) and enzymatic approaches. Nanostructured sensing units were as-sembled by modifying the surface of standard conductive materials with the pre-viously indicated biomaterials. Standard conductive supports selected for this purpose were carbon and gold.
Overall, it is expected that the emerging biosensing materials and platforms out coming from this project may contribute for the development of new non-inva-sive or minimally invasive methods with clinical application in the early screen-ing of chronic diseases and fast-screening in point-of-care (POC) of acute events
