Any diabetic will tell you that there has to be a better way than doing finger pricks for blood glucose testing. Researchers at Brown University may have developed a new sensor that would allow instead the sampling of saliva for glucose testing. The sensor relies on plasmonic interferometry, a light-based way of detecting chemical compounds, and a dual-enzyme assay that work as a dye to mark glucose.
The researched dubbed their sensor as “plasmonic cuvette” and believe that it can identify a variety of interesting biomolecules within complex solutions such as bodily fluids. Of course blood-free glucose sensing is a Holy Grail of medicine and we’re glad to see that there’s a real possibility of saliva-powered glucometers hitting the market in the not too distant future.
Some details about the new device according to the study abstract in Nanophotonics:
The sensor, coined a “plasmonic cuvette,” is built around a nano-scale groove-slit-groove (GSG) plasmonic interferometer coupled to an Amplex–red/Glucose–oxidase/Glucose (AR/GOx/Glucose) assay. The proposed device is highly sensitive, with a measured intensity change of 1.7×105%/m (i.e., one order of magnitude more sensitive than without assay) and highly specific for glucose sensing in picoliter volumes, across the physiological range of glucose concentrations found in human saliva (20–240 μm). Real-time glucose monitoring in saliva is achieved by performing a detailed study of the underlying enzyme-driven reactions to determine and tune the effective rate constants in order to reduce the overall assay reaction time to ∼2 min.
Study in Nanophotonics: A “plasmonic cuvette”: dye chemistry coupled to plasmonic interferometry for glucose sensing