A cost-effective and sensitive photothermal biosensor for the diagnosis of diabetes based on quantifying the sialic acid content on erythrocytes

• Published in: Sensors and actuators. B, Chemical Chemical, 2021-02, Vol.329, p.129259, Article 129259
• Main Authors: Kwon, Kirok, Chakravarty, Sudesna, Hyun, Kyung-A, Bae, Nam-Ho, Song, Jaewoo, Lee, Seok Jae, Jung, Hyo-Il
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Biosensors; Diabetes; Erythrocytes; Manpower; Microfluidic; Microfluidics; Monitoring; Nickel; Photothermal biosensor; Platinum; Pretreatment; Sialic acid; Telemedicine; Temperature detector; Temperature gradients
• ISSN: 0925-4005; 1873-3077
• DOI: 10.1016/j.snb.2020.129259

•We have proposed micro-Ni-RTD, a reliable and low-cost photothermal biosensor, for the diagnosis of diabetes patients.•We used Nickel as the sensor material to reduce the cost of sensor.•The immobilization protocol of the sensor surface has been modified to enhance the sensitivity of the sensors.•It was confirmed that the micro-Ni-RTD can successfully diagnose diabetes using the blood of patients and healthy donors. Photothermal sensors represent a novel type of probe having potential in the field of clinical diagnostics particularly due to the lack of a tedious sample pre-treatment, a sophisticated equipment and a skilled manpower. Herein, we describe the fabrication of a microfluidic nickel-resistive temperature detector (micro-Ni-RTD) for the selective monitoring of diabetes using a boronate-based sialic acid (SA) receptor. This work represents an improvement made to our previous photothermal sensor designs by reducing the cost by about 100-fold and significantly improving the sensitivity of the device, enabling the detection of sialic acid contents as low as 0.06 μmol/mL, a 4-fold improvement compared to the sensor described our previous study. The average temperature difference between healthy subjects and diabetes patients was found to be 0.181 °C dL/g with micro-Ni-RTD in comparison with 0.043 °C dL/g with our previous platinum-based resistive temperature detector (Pt-RTD) reported previously The enhancement in the discriminatory ability of micro-Ni-RTD for the diabetic clinical samples compared with healthy control can be attributed to the modified surface modification strategy and the incorporation of the microfluidic channels. Thus, micro-Ni-RTD represents a convenient, rapid, reliable, and low-cost biosensor for the clinical monitoring of diabetes patients.