Summary:
UCLA researchers in the Department of Bioengineering have developed a novel wearable device for real-time, minimally-invasive medication monitoring.
Background:
Current medication dosing is determined by taking the average therapeutic dose of a small patient sample size. However, this is often inaccurate for many individuals and the recommended dose could lead to adverse effects or ineffective pharmacotherapy. Personalized therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) for patients is one method to resolve this issue, however, this personalized monitoring is typically invasive, costly, and involves numerous clinic visits for blood draws. A suitable substitute to this is the application of probing a patient’s interstitial fluid (ISF) for real-time measurement of pharmaceutical levels. Recent developments in microneedle technology have generated devices that are well-suited to retrieve the molecular information in the ISF. However, the demonstrated microneedle devices for drug measurement in the ISF rely on enzymes or ionophores, technologies which are unsuitable for sensing a wide array of analytes and thus limiting drug monitoring capabilities. Because of these drawbacks in the state-of-the-art, there is a need to develop mobile and wearable devices that analyze non-invasively ISF to perform therapeutic drug monitoring.
Innovation:
UCLA researchers have developed a wearable sensor incorporating a simple and low-cost microneedle system to accurately monitor drug concentrations in ISF. The system incorporates electrochemical aptamer biosensors (EABs) as artificially-engineered recognition elements, which can greatly expand the library of detectable analytes versus traditional enzyme-based sensors. The EABs are placed on microneedles to develop an aptamer microneedle patch (“AMPatch”), allowing researchers for the first time to measure drug levels from the ISF in-situ. The results indicate the suitability of the AMPatch to serve as an advanced yet accessible TDM tool to enable personalized pharmacotherapy. This novel device could be an invaluable tool in the prevention of medicine misdosing.
Potential Applications:
• Mobile drug quantification assay
• Drug compliance/abuse monitoring
• Feedback-controlled drug delivery
• Antibiotic treatment monitoring
Advantages:
• Light-weight, non-invasive
• Surface engineered for increased undistorted potential window
• Surface engineered for anti-biofouling
• Real-time therapeutic drug monitoring
• Aptamer-based providing broader sensing range vs. traditional enzyme sensors
Development to Date:
TRL ~ 7. A fully integrated and wearable device is discussed in the manuscript.
Related Papers: S. Lin, W. Yu, B. Wang, Y. Zhao, K. En, J. Zhu, X. Cheng, C. Zhou, H. Lin, Z. Wang, H. Hojaiji, C. Yeung, C. Milla, R. W. Davis, and S. Emaminejad, "Noninvasive wearable electroactive pharmaceutical monitoring for personalized therapeutics", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(32), 19017-19025, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2009979117, 2020.
Reference: UCLA Case No. 2022-222