Oncology & Cancer

Using light to monitor cancer

Researchers at EPFL have developed a technology based on nanophotonics and data science to detect and monitor cancer biomarkers at an early stage. Their research is published in Nature Communications.

Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes

Measuring glucose without needle pricks

Pricking a finger everyday is just part of everyday life for many diabetes patients. A non-invasive measurement approach could release them from the constant pain of pin pricks. The linchpin is a biosensor engineered by Fraunhofer ...

Medical research

Facilitating diagnosis with a new type of biosensor

Scientists from the Max Planck Institute and EPFL have developed a new type of biosensor able to precisely quantify metabolites using a single drop of blood. The accuracy and simplicity of the procedure could make it a tool ...

Medical research

Nicotine works inside cells to reinforce addiction: study

When a person takes a puff on a cigarette, nicotine floods into the brain, latching onto receptors on the surface of neurons and producing feelings of happiness. But nicotine does not simply stay on the surface of cells—the ...

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Biosensor

A biosensor is a device for the detection of an analyte that combines a biological component with a physicochemical detector component.

It consists of 3 parts:

The most widespread example of a commercial biosensor is the blood glucose biosensor, which uses the enzyme glucose oxidase to break blood glucose down. In doing so it first oxidizes glucose and uses two electrons to reduce the FAD (a component of the enzyme) to FADH2. This in turn is oxidized by the electrode (accepting two electrons from the electrode) in a number of steps. The resulting current is a measure of the concentration of glucose. In this case, the electrode is the transducer and the enzyme is the biologically active component.

Recently, arrays of many different detector molecules have been applied in so called electronic nose devices, where the pattern of response from the detectors is used to fingerprint a substance. Current commercial electronic noses, however, do not use biological elements.

A canary in a cage, as used by miners to warn of gas could be considered a biosensor. Many of today's biosensor applications are similar, in that they use organisms which respond to toxic substances at a much lower level than us to warn us of their presence. Such devices can be used in environmental monitoring, trace gas detection and in water treatment facilities.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA