SUMMARY
UCLA researchers in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering have developed a non-invasive wearable biosensor for personalized drug monitoring and excretion via sweat.
BACKGROUND
Wearable biosensor technology has become popular in the tracking of heart rate and daily calories. While it also has the potential to be applied for more clinical applications such as tracking drug metabolism in a patient, current voltammetry-based wearables that can detect and quantify metabolites are susceptible to elimination of electroactive drugs from a patient via sweat. Sweat, which is a complex biofluid matrix, can distort or hide the signal of the target. Therefore, there is a need to develop a wearable voltammetric sensor that can detect the substrate of interest without interference from other compounds within sweat. Such advancements can be used to develop drug monitoring wearables that can be used in a variety of clinically relevant applications, such as drug compliance/abuse as well as personalized therapeutic drug dosing.
INNOVATION
UCLA researchers in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering developed a wearable voltammetric sensor that creates an undistorted detection window during which a target drug’s response can be accurately analyzed. The wearable uses a boron-doped diamond sensing interface that prevents contamination of the target signal by complex biofluids such as saliva and sweat. The device is capable of providing a drug readout with a minute-level temporal resolution and has been successfully used to demonstrate the pharmacokinetic correlation and significance of sweat readings. In addition, the device has also been successfully used to demonstrate the first time non-invasive pharmacokinetic monitoring of acetaminophen in a wearable format.
POTENTIAL APPLICATIONS
ADVANTAGES
RELATED MATERIALS
STATUS OF DEVELOPMENT
First successful demonstration (first actual reduction to practice)