Periodic Reporting for period 2 - CytoTrack (Wearable diagnostic for inflammation tracking for personalized patient care among at-risk patients)
Berichtszeitraum: 2021-10-01 bis 2022-09-30
While blood testing is the established gold standard to routinely check for toxicity events during treatment, it has many drawbacks. First, it provides only a snapshot of the situation at a certain time: what happens between two blood tests is not known. In the current era of COVID-19 pandemic that affects Europe and the whole world, and concurrently of rising use of immunotherapy to treat cancer patients, continuous monitoring of key symptoms has become paramount. Second, because blood testing does not provide real-time results, the snapshot reveals a situation that could be few hours, or a day old. This significantly hampers the ability to quickly react with behavioural changes or with medications. While this is true in general, it is even more true for CRS, which requires a continuous monitoring to detect cytokine storms as soon as they happen to reduce toxicity and ultimately adjust treatment when it is still time. Finally, with COVID-19 confinement and emergency measures resulting from scarce resources, blood testing requires trained caregivers, and therefore cannot easily be deployed.
The work has mainly focused on WP1 - Preclinical validation in human samples.
For WP1, the work has focused on (1) the sensing, and (2) ISF collection.
For (1) sensing, the team has advanced on the development of CRP sensing with Silicon Nanowire FET sensing, and started exploring future industrialisation paths.
For (2) ISF collection, the team has analyzed inflammatory markers in ISF biofluid in samples collected before and after COVID vaccination, by developing a 3D printed holder with CE-IVD approved microneedles. The team has also started working on an industrializable silicon hollow microneedle based solution.
For WP1, the work has focused on (1) the sensing, and (2) ISF collection.
For (1) sensing, the team has advanced on the development of CRP sensing with Silicon Nanowire FET sensing, and started exploring future industrialisation paths.
For (2) ISF collection, the team has analyzed inflammatory markers in ISF biofluid in samples collected before and after COVID vaccination, by developing a 3D printed holder with CE-IVD approved microneedles. The team has also started working on an industrializable silicon hollow microneedle based solution.
While the field of preventive health through wearables is in constant progression, no product on the market allows yet to continuously, non-invasively and non-intrusively track a panel of biomarkers to provide monitoring in real time. This is true for biomarkers in general, and even more in the case for cytokines, which are notoriously hard to detect. Saliva, urine and exhaled breath are other types of biofluids that can be commonly sampled by medical practitioners. Collection of saliva with a swab is indeed very convenient: the biofluids is abundant and easily accessible, but it is not practical for continuous testing. Furthermore, saliva viscosity varies enormously, making the development of a standard solution fairly challenging. Urine is more widely used for tests, especially for tests related to drugs of abuse, hormones and pregnancy tests. Exhaled breath offers interesting opportunities in the space of breath volatile organic compounds for respiratory conditions, although like saliva and urine, it is fairly inadequate for continuous testing. Tear fluids and sweat have recently gained much interest as highly promising biofluid alternatives to blood. These “emerging biofluids” were previously deemed too challenging to access, but major progress in miniaturization of engineering solutions have suddenly put them in the spotlight. Tear fluid, for example, has emerged as an interesting candidate for continuous glucose monitoring, and research groups are working on enhancing contact lenses in varying stages of clinical validation. However, while eye tears can be accessed almost continuously, they are mixed with a lipid and mucous layer, and user acceptance for a rather invasive solution in a highly sensitive and infection-prone area of the body has yet to be proven. ISF by contrast appears much better suited for continuous collection.