New way to sense chemicals in body fluids

Sensing chemicals or metabolites in human body is difficult and new technologies are required
Several sensors exist for measuring specific compounds in body fluids in vitro and in vivo. The common ones to sense glucose and lactate use and enzyme that is coupled to some electronic moiety that then generates a signal. This signal is then transferred to an electronic component which amplifies the signal and then transmits it to the electronics on the outside.
However, the interface between the electronics and the biology is inefficient requiring several more components to make it work.
The BioElectronic Systems Technologies team at Cambridge, UK has come up with a conductive plastic that also senses metabolites and chemicals. This not only make the process of generating new sensors faster and more efficient but also makes sensors cheaper since they are easy to manufacture without requiring expensive metals like gold. In addition, incorporating plastics into the body might be useful for low antigenicity and toxicity benefits too.
Watch for a new sensor coming soon and read about this work in original in Science Advances (2018). A.M. Pappa et al. ‘Direct metabolite detection with an n-type accumulation mode organic electrochemical transistor.’ Science Advances (2018)