Chronologically Correlated Sweat Biosensing

时间相关的汗液生物传感

• 批准号: 1608275
• 负责人: Jason Heikenfeld
• 金额: $ 37.5万
• 依托单位: University of Cincinnati Main Campus
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2016
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2016-07-01 至 2020-10-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1608275&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Chronologically; Correlated; Sweat; Biosensing

Among non-invasive wearable technologies with a large upside potential, sweat sensing technology is arguably the most underdeveloped. Even so, excitement is building, as many sweat electrolytes, metabolites, amino acids, proteins, and other biomarkers are showing promise for monitoring both mental and physical status and/or disease. However, unfortunately many of the commercially available technology solutions that could be used for sweat require ~10's of microliters sample volumes, which are entirely too large for continuous sweat analysis. Even the latest patch or tattoo advances in sweat sensing technology require several microliters of biofluid, resulting in slow sampling intervals (10's of minutes or even hours). If one of the biggest arguments for sweat sensing is the potential for continuous monitoring, then there is a clear and pressing need to discover powerful yet simple methods to continuously bring the tiniest amounts of sweat (nanoliters) to sensors. This is by no means a simple challenge, as the skin surface is highly variable and presents numerous factors that can confound sweat sampling. If such technology could be developed the payoff could be huge, allowing: (1) correlations with blood with as fast as ~2 min. time resolution; (2) for sedentary users, more sampling events per day of natural sweat; (3) for chemically stimulated sweat, a 100X reduction in the amount of chemical stimulant delivered compared to commercial products; (4) importantly, reducing confounding contamination coming from the dead skin surface. Clearly, improved sweat sampling is a central-challenge worthy of attention by researchers. Furthermore, such a research topic is also ideal for cultivating and inspiring the next generation of scientists and engineers through integration of research with both high-school and undergraduate student research and teaching.The specific objective of this NSF proposal is to create for the first time, the ability to achieve chronologically correlated sweat sensing with minute-level resolution. The proposal's central hypothesis is that through a clever interplay of microfluidics, the fluidic volume between eccrine sweat ducts and sensors can be reduced from ~1's of microliters down to 10's of nanoliters (10-100X), resulting in only minutes before new sweat reaches the sensors. The rationale for pursuing this hypothesis is simple, sweat sensing has enormous upside potential for applications in patient and wellness monitoring, athletics, narrow therapeutic-range pharmaceutical monitoring, etc., but cannot reach its full potential unless lower sweat rates can be used, faster sampling times enabled, and analyte contamination from the skin surface mitigated. The proposal also advances knowledge in sweat sensing science by: (1) creating temporal models which predict the time for partitioning of ionic, molecular, and protein analytes from blood, into sweat, and onto the sensors;(2) advancing the frontiers of minimum biofluid sampling and sensing from the microliter to the nanoliter regime;(3 experimentally validating both the created models and technology, and therefore igniting further pursuit of sweat sensing science and technology.

在具有巨大上升潜力的非侵入性可穿戴技术中，汗液传感技术可以说是最不发达的。即便如此，人们仍然兴奋不已，因为许多汗液电解质、代谢物、氨基酸、蛋白质和其他生物标志物都显示出监测精神和身体状态和/或疾病的希望。 然而，不幸的是，许多可用于汗液的市售技术解决方案需要约 10 微升的样本量，这对于连续汗液分析来说太大了。即使汗液传感技术的最新贴片或纹身进步也需要几微升的生物液，导致采样间隔很慢（数十分钟甚至几个小时）。如果汗液传感的最大论据之一是连续监测的潜力，那么显然迫切需要发现强大而简单的方法来连续地将最少量的汗液（纳升）传送到传感器。 这绝不是一个简单的挑战，因为皮肤表面变化很大，并且存在许多可能混淆汗液采样的因素。如果能够开发出这样的技术，回报可能是巨大的，可以实现：(1) 与血液的关联速度最快可达 2 分钟。时间分辨率； (2)对于久坐的使用者，每天自然汗液的采样次数较多； (3) 对于化学刺激的汗液，与商业产品相比，化学刺激剂的输送量减少了 100 倍； (4)重要的是，减少来自死皮表面的混杂污染。显然，改进汗液采样是值得研究人员关注的核心挑战。 此外，这样的研究课题也是通过将研究与高中生和本科生的研究和教学相结合来培养和激励下一代科学家和工程师的理想选择。这项 NSF 提案的具体目标是首次创建，能够以分钟级分辨率实现时间相关的汗液传感。 该提案的中心假设是，通过微流体的巧妙相互作用，小汗腺导管和传感器之间的流体体积可以从约 1 微升减少到 10 纳升（10-100X），从而在新的汗液到达之前只需几分钟。传感器。 追求这一假设的理由很简单，汗液传感在患者和健康监测、体育、窄治疗范围药物监测等应用中具有巨大的上升潜力，但除非可以更快地使用更低的出汗率，否则无法充分发挥其潜力采样时间缩短，皮肤表面的分析物污染减轻。该提案还通过以下方式推进了汗液传感科学的知识：(1) 创建时间模型，预测离子、分子和蛋白质分析物从血液中分配到汗液中并到达传感器的时间；(2) 推进最小边界从微升到纳升范围的生物流体采样和传感；(3 通过实验验证了所创建的模型和技术，从而激发了对汗液传感科学和技术的进一步追求。