Issue.
Patients affected by neurological diseases, such as Parkinson’s disease (PD), Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Dementia and Schizophrenia, exceed 100 million people worldwide. Currently, no specific cure or therapy is available for suppressing such diseases: indeed, the current therapies are employed to slow down the deterioration of the patients’ health, thus trying to increase their quality of life. This can be done through lifelong medical treatments which include pharmacological treatments, physiotherapy and, in some cases, surgical procedures. Therefore, the social costs linked to these diseases are enormous and will continue to increase with each passing year: for example, in the USA, the average cost for PD medication is 2500$ per year while the costs for surgery can go up to 100000$ for each patient.
These neurological diseases are associated with a dysfunction of the dopamine system: PD is generated by the loss of the dopamine producing neurons in a specific brain area, while Schizophrenia is linked to an alteration of the dopamine levels and, finally, low levels of dopamine might be indicative of early-stage AD.
Impact.
Develop a wearable sweat sensing platform for dopamine detection which can discreetly adhere to the skin with greater flexibility of location. This configuration is the most suitable for medical uses which are characterized by a lower sweat production.
The availability of a non-invasive method for dopamine monitoring could represent a huge advantage in the formulation of pharmacological protocols tailored for each patient and, regarding long term monitoring, to trace the disease evolution and plan accordingly how to slow down as much as possible the disease progression, thus hopefully increasing the quality and the lifespan of the patients.
Final objective.
Provide advancements in the field of wearable printed bioelectronics. A particular focus is given on neurological pathologies, with a final device capable of improving the quality of life for millions of people affected by these disorders and to reduce the social costs by allowing to easily tailor pharmacological treatments for each patient. To reach this goal, novel materials, device configurations and manufacturing process have been developed.
