Periodic Reporting for period 1 - RESORB (On-Demand Bioresorbable OptoElectronic System for In-Vivo and In-Situ Monitoring of Chemotherapeutic Drugs)
Reporting period: 2022-04-01 to 2023-03-31
Imagine your doctor could slip a miniaturized sensing system under your skin and use it to continuously monitor the concentration of almost any molecule in real-time as it circulates through your peripheral blood. This would revolutionize many areas of diagnostics, enabling individualized reports on both disease progression and drug efficacy to be achieved continuously, in real-time. Now, imagine the sensing system implanted under your skin to communicate with your mobile phone (wireless communication) to transfer the clinically relevant data (biomarker or drug concentration) directly to your doctor. This would impact the way we diagnose diseases and monitor drug efficacy, currently based on single-moment-in-time tests, enabling personal, timely, and effective medical feedback (real-time personalized medicine). Finally, imagine the biochemical sensor in your body is RESORBed upon a click, once you don’t need it anymore. This would eliminate any need for sensor retrieval, avoiding risks connected to surgery and providing a risk-free “red button” to destroy it, in case issues will occur (e.g. end of the therapeutic process, inflammation, malfunctioning).
The aim of the RESORB project is to revolutionise the clinical-diagnostic field by developing implantable and bioresorbable chemical sensing systems able to operate in vivo and monitor drug molecules (and other markers) of clinical-diagnostic relevance, thus changing the paradigm in chemical sensing to date based on the withdrawal of bodily fluid to bring to a standalone external sensor.
The aim of the RESORB project is to revolutionise the clinical-diagnostic field by developing implantable and bioresorbable chemical sensing systems able to operate in vivo and monitor drug molecules (and other markers) of clinical-diagnostic relevance, thus changing the paradigm in chemical sensing to date based on the withdrawal of bodily fluid to bring to a standalone external sensor.
During the first year of the RESORB project we have focused on the choice of bioresorbable or biodegradable materials suitable for the design and fabrication of all the necessary building blocks of the chemical sensing system that is the main objective of the proposal.
All the building blocks have been fabricated, though in a non optimised version, successfully tested in vitro, and some of them have been patented. In-vivo tests for biocompatibility and operation are on going.
All the building blocks have been fabricated, though in a non optimised version, successfully tested in vitro, and some of them have been patented. In-vivo tests for biocompatibility and operation are on going.
A miniaturised optoelectronic system leveraging a bioresorbable fluorescence sensor for real-time monitoring of the pH level in vivo and wireless transmission of pH data to a smartphone/tablet for their storage, visualization, and processing has been developed during the first year of the RESORB project. The results have been published in two research papers [1,2].
The system integrates a reusable driving/readout circuit, wireless transceiver, and power supply and leverages a bioresorbable fluorescence sensor consisting of a porous silica scaffold coated with a multilayer stack of fluorescent nanometer-thick polymers. The pH-induced swelling/shrinking of the multilayer stack transduces pH changes into a linear increase/decrease of the fluorescence intensity. Both the system and sensor were able to operate in the physio-pathological pH range of 3–7.5 with high linearity, accuracy, and reliability. The sensor has been also successfully tested for biocompatibility and bioresorbability in vivo, in an animal model.
The sensor, and in turn the sensing system, can be adapted to monitor other markers/analytes if polymers functionalized with suitable receptors, instead of fluorophores, are used for the functionalization of the.
[1] Wireless and Flexible Optoelectronic System for In Situ Monitoring of Vaginal pH Using a Bioresorbable Fluorescence Sensor, A Paghi, M Corsi, AA La Mattina, G Egri, L Dähne, G Barillaro, Advanced Materials Technologies, 2022, 2201600 (DOI: 10.1002/admt.202201600.
[2] Bioresorbable Nanostructured Chemical Sensor for Monitoring of pH Level In Vivo, M.Corsi A. Paghi, S. Mariani, G. Golinelli, A. Debrassi, G. Egri, G. Leo, E. Vandini, A. Vilella, L. Dähne, D. Giuliani, and G. Barillaro, Advanced Science 2022, 2202062 (DOI: 10.1002/advs.202202062)
The system integrates a reusable driving/readout circuit, wireless transceiver, and power supply and leverages a bioresorbable fluorescence sensor consisting of a porous silica scaffold coated with a multilayer stack of fluorescent nanometer-thick polymers. The pH-induced swelling/shrinking of the multilayer stack transduces pH changes into a linear increase/decrease of the fluorescence intensity. Both the system and sensor were able to operate in the physio-pathological pH range of 3–7.5 with high linearity, accuracy, and reliability. The sensor has been also successfully tested for biocompatibility and bioresorbability in vivo, in an animal model.
The sensor, and in turn the sensing system, can be adapted to monitor other markers/analytes if polymers functionalized with suitable receptors, instead of fluorophores, are used for the functionalization of the.
[1] Wireless and Flexible Optoelectronic System for In Situ Monitoring of Vaginal pH Using a Bioresorbable Fluorescence Sensor, A Paghi, M Corsi, AA La Mattina, G Egri, L Dähne, G Barillaro, Advanced Materials Technologies, 2022, 2201600 (DOI: 10.1002/admt.202201600.
[2] Bioresorbable Nanostructured Chemical Sensor for Monitoring of pH Level In Vivo, M.Corsi A. Paghi, S. Mariani, G. Golinelli, A. Debrassi, G. Egri, G. Leo, E. Vandini, A. Vilella, L. Dähne, D. Giuliani, and G. Barillaro, Advanced Science 2022, 2202062 (DOI: 10.1002/advs.202202062)