‘Low-cost mass production’ is also easy… High scalability such as cardiovascular disease
A British research team is developing a device that can detect early signs of Alzheimer’s disease or cancer by simply attaching it to the skin for 6 minutes.
It is a ‘smart patch’ technology using a ‘micro needle’. It is not only easy to mass-produce at a low price, but also has a high possibility of expanding the scope of application to various diseases in the future.
Professor Sanjeev Sharma of the Department of Biomedicine and Engineering at Swansea University in the UK and Felismina Moreira of the Porto Institute of Technology Polytechnic Institute (ISEP IPP) research team published a thesis on this in ‘ACS Omega’, an international journal published by the American Chemical Society (ACS). announced.
The research team is developing a concept device that diagnoses diseases by collecting and analyzing interstitial fluid (ISF) by attaching a microneedle to the skin. The diagnostic goal of this study is to measure the concentration of interleukin-6 (IL-6), one of the protein substances contained in interstitial fluid, for Alzheimer’s disease.
IL-6 is one of the representative ‘inflammatory cytokines’. It is a protein substance that transmits signals to activate the immune system when our body is infected or systemic inflammation occurs. When IL-6 is secreted, it induces an acute immune response and an inflammatory response, promoting differentiation of macrophages and antibody production.
In general, when infection or disease occurs, the concentration of IL-6 in interstitial fluid increases, but Alzheimer’s disease patients use the principle that IL-6 concentration decreases even though they are suffering from the disease.
Professor Sharma said, “The skin is not only the largest organ in our body, so much so that it can be said to be ‘the window of the body including the brain’, and the amount of interstitial fluid in the skin is greater than the total amount of blood in the body.” In a short period of time, it is possible to detect various biomarkers in interstitial fluid with high accuracy, so it will be possible to diagnose at home not only by doctors but also by patients themselves in the medical field.”
Researcher Moreira, co-author of the thesis, said, “It can completely change the environment in which neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s dementia are early discovered.” It can also be expanded to diagnosis for people,” he said.
In fact, the medical world and others are looking at the scalability of medical and bio technologies using smart patches as promising. Earlier in 2021, Swansea University in England announced plans to commercialize a ‘Corona 19 vaccine patch’ using Professor Sharma’s microneedle patch.
