Project description
Wearable medical device for monitoring diabetes and obesity
Type 2 diabetes (T2D) and obesity are multifactorial disorders and monitoring is difficult as multiple biomarkers are required. Current equipment exhibits significant limitations associated with lack of precision, size and complexity. Funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the DVD-E project proposes to develop a groundbreaking multiplexed medical device for monitoring chronic disorders. The device will combine different technologies such as optics, electrochemistry, microfluidics, and optoelectronics to measure various energy biomarkers, including the novel metabolite succinate. This portable and cost-effective approach will decentralise the monitoring of chronic disorders and improve the management of patients living with T2D and obesity.
Objective
Obesity is one of the most common and costly chronic disorder worldwide, and is a causal or a strong risk factor for several comorbidities, as type 2 diabetes (T2D), which is now reaching epidemic proportions. To monitor multifactorial disorders such as obesity and T2D, clinical evidences from more than one energetic biomarker are crucial. Current multiplexed systems present limited multiplicity capacities because they combine individual tests spatially separated from the others requiring complex and bulky instruments (e.g. HPLC), so they are difficult to operate out of the laboratory. Other described tests also cannot be adapted to monitor chronic disorders because they present at least one of the following critical limitations: (1) they are semi-quantitative (e.g. lateral flow test) so cannot perform the analyte monitoring to the required level of precision, (2) restricted to a single analyte which does not address the accepted criteria that an obesity management requires clinical evidence from multiple biomarkers and/or (3) cannot integrate the microfluidic processing required for blood analysis.
To overcome current limitations, a novel multiplexed medical device is proposed here to enable for the very first time the fully control and management of chronic disorders as obesity and T2D. This will combine optics, electrochemistry, microfluidics and optoelectronics to monitor the most appropriate energy biomarkers (succinate as novel metabolite, in addition to lactate, ketones, pyruvate and glycaemia) in a friendly and decentralised way. No one has previously proposed a useful multiplexed approach as this, allowing the opportunity of the control of a particular energy biomarker such as succinate, which will facilitate current chronic disorders management. Thus, this novel cost-effective and portable multiplexed medical device, with unique and unprecedented attributes, will play a role key in the accurate management of chronic disorders.
Fields of science
- natural sciencesphysical sciencesclassical mechanicsfluid mechanicsmicrofluidics
- natural scienceschemical sciencesorganic chemistryketones
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicineendocrinologydiabetes
- engineering and technologymedical engineeringmedical laboratory technologylaboratory samples analysis
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencesnutritionobesity
Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European FellowshipsCoordinator
10691 Stockholm
Sweden