At home measurement of an inflammation biomarker
The ability to monitor disease processes remotely can enable self-management in order to provide the proper care to remote patients.Biomedical outcomes (laboratory or imaging), functional outcomes (physical or mental functioning) or patient-reported outcomes (PROMs: symptoms, perceptions) can be used to determine disease activity and/or the effect of interventions.Specific biomarkers are available for most inflammatory diseases, such as the inflammatory protein C-reactive protein (CRP). However, these biomarkers cannot be reliably measured in a Point-of-Care (POC) setting e.g. in a home situation, yet.Remote monitoring of these conditions often involves the use of functional measurements, such as patient perceptions, using PROMs. However, these measurement methods rarely have comparable predictive properties as the most clinically used biomedical outcomes for inflammatory diseases, such as laboratory determination of CRP.This is a major limitation for reliable remote disease monitoring and could lead to delayed detection of high disease activity (false negative results) or incorrect intervention in the event of low disease activity (false positive results).A practically applicable and reliable POC (home) test for CRP, which the patient can use for self-monitoring and share with the GP/specialist for decision-making purposes, can contribute to more accurate and safer remote monitoring of inflammatory conditions.Although Medical Spectrum Twente (MST), in collaboration with Unilabs, has already conducted several experiments with home tests that the patient could take independently and send to the laboratory by post, none of these tests meet the required reliability, validity, usability and applicability. It is expected that these requirements could be met based on the new generation of lab-on-a-chip and (bio)sensors, a novel nanotechnology that is being developed and validated in a collaboration between Saxion, Unilabs and the University of Twente (UT). The aim of this project is the development and validation of a POC home test for CRP, which in the future can be used for (tele-)monitoring and self-management of inflammatory diseases. First, a test setup will be realized for a proof-of-principle CRP test based on existing biosensor configurations, such as lateral flow assays (LFA) (Saxion), electrochemical sensors and nanopores (UT), which are potentially suitable for the development of a POC CRP home test. For the LFA test, it will be investigated which specific receptors are needed to use and in which conditions these receptors need to be spotted, in order to be able to measure the CRP biomarker in clinically relevant concentrations (specifically and accurately). For the nanopore sensor, novel lipid membranes and/or block copolymers will be tested, which could tolerate higher concentration blood samples. This research will be performed via internship and/or graduation assignments at Saxion (BSc and MSc) and the UT (MSc). To determine the performance of the biosensor configurations, a protocol will be first developed for the validation of the test setup with CRP samples, first in non-complex media, such as buffer, followed by clinically relevant samples, such as urine and/or serum/blood. Biosensor configurations will be characterized with respect to detection limit, reproducibility, specificity and accuracy for CRP detection. By investigating the performance of LFAs, electrochemical sensors and nanopores, the most suitable sensor configuration for this application can be chosen
Project duration:
Spring 24/25 (February 2025 – July 2025)
Educational programs:
– Biology and Medical Lab (BML)
Interested, please send your motivation letter and CV before the 8th of December 2024 to Aurel Ymeti (a.ymeti@saxion.nl)