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Bio-MEMS for Precision Medicine

A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Biosensors".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (5 November 2017) | Viewed by 53582

Special Issue Editors

Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511, USA
Interests: single cell analysis; micro/nanobiotechnology; cancer diagnosis; immune monitoring

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences, Sabanci University, 34956 Istanbul, Turkey
Interests: quantiative biology; microfabricated tools; live-cell imaging; dielectrophoresis; drug killing mechanisms

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Despite recent advances in human genomics, how to convert the knoweldge gathered from omics data to actionable clincial decisions depends on, not only the discovery of biomarkers, but also the means to collect accurate, informative, and longitudinal patient-specific measurements from precious clinical specimens to stratify patients, such that the right drug can be given to the right patient at early stages and can be readily adjusted along the course of treatment. Highly miniturized biosensors, built on the microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technology, Biomedical-MEMS (Bio-MEMS) sensors, offer unique advantages in applications, including rapid, user-friendly patient sample collection, cost-effective point-of-care (POC) detection, automated biomolecular screening, single-cell resolution analyses, high-throughput panomics analyses, personalized drug tests, and controlled delivery. Therefore, bioMEMS are well positioned to expedite the translation of basic research on human diseases to clinical impacts in personalized medince.

This Special Issue aims to highlight the latest advances in this field, as well as prospective studies regarding how bioMEMS can transform medicine in the future.

Topics include, but are not limited to:

Novel micro and nanosensor for biomedical applications
Microsystems for cancer detection, diagnostics, and stratification
Microsystems for immunophenotyping and immune monitoring
Microsystems to faciliate the study of genomics, epigenomics, or transcriptomics
Single cell analysis
Organ-on-a-chip systems for human disease modeling and drug screening.
Microfluidics for rare cell counting, sorting and functional measurement
Point of care diagnostics
Biospecimen processing, purification, and quality evaluation
Microsystems for drug discovery and high content screening
Microsystems for drug delivery

Prof. Dr. Rong Fan
Dr. Meltem Elitas
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sensors is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • biosensor
  • microfluidics
  • organ-on-a-chip
  • single cell analysis
  • cancer detection
  • immune monitoring
  • and drug screening

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

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15 pages, 6399 KiB  
Article
An Improved Method for Magnetic Nanocarrier Drug Delivery across the Cell Membrane
by Behzad Mehrafrooz, Maysam Z. Pedram and Ebrahim Ghafar-Zadeh
Sensors 2018, 18(2), 381; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18020381 - 29 Jan 2018
Cited by 14 | Viewed by 5098
Abstract
One of the crucial issues in the pharmacological field is developing new drug delivery systems. The main concern is to develop new methods for improving the drug delivery efficiencies such as low disruptions, precise control of the target of delivery and drug sustainability. [...] Read more.
One of the crucial issues in the pharmacological field is developing new drug delivery systems. The main concern is to develop new methods for improving the drug delivery efficiencies such as low disruptions, precise control of the target of delivery and drug sustainability. Nowadays, there are many various methods for drug delivery systems. Carbon-based nanocarriers are a new efficient tool for translocating drug into the defined area or cells inside the body. These nanocarriers can be functionalized with proteins, peptides and used to transport their freight to cells or defined areas. Since functionalized carbon-based nanocarriers show low toxicity and high biocompatibility, they are used in many nanobiotechnology fields. In this study, different shapes of nanocarrier are investigated, and the suitable magnetic field, which is applied using MRI for the delivery of the nanocarrier, is proposed. In this research, based on the force required to cross the membrane and MD simulations, the optimal magnetic field profile is designed. This optimal magnetic force field is derived from the mathematical model of the system and magnetic particle dynamics inside the nanocarrier. The results of this paper illustrate the effects of the nanocarrier’s shapes on the percentage of success in crossing the membrane and the optimal required magnetic field. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Bio-MEMS for Precision Medicine)
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10 pages, 2267 KiB  
Article
A Fully Integrated Paper-Microfluidic Electrochemical Device for Simultaneous Analysis of Physiologic Blood Ions
by Joon-Hyung Jin, Joon Hyub Kim, Sang Ki Lee, Sam Jin Choi, Chan Won Park and Nam Ki Min
Sensors 2018, 18(1), 104; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18010104 - 01 Jan 2018
Cited by 23 | Viewed by 5536
Abstract
A fully integrated paper microfluidic electrochemical device equipped with three different cation permeable films is developed to determine blood ions (Cl, Na+, K+, and Ca2+) at a time. These blood ions that are normally dissolved [...] Read more.
A fully integrated paper microfluidic electrochemical device equipped with three different cation permeable films is developed to determine blood ions (Cl, Na+, K+, and Ca2+) at a time. These blood ions that are normally dissolved in the real human blood stream are essential for cell metabolisms and homeostasis in the human body. Abnormal concentration of blood ions causes many serious disorders. The optimized microfluidic device working without any external power source can directly and effectively separate human blood components, and subsequently detect a specific blood ion with minimized interference. The measured sensitivity to Cl, K+, Na+, and Ca2+ are −47.71, 45.97, 51.06, and 19.46 in mV decade−1, respectively. Potentiometric responses of the microfluidic devices to blood serum samples are in the normal ranges of each cation, and comparable with responses from the commercial blood ion analyzer Abbott i-Stat. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Bio-MEMS for Precision Medicine)
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3928 KiB  
Article
Highly Sensitive FPW-Based Microsystem for Rapid Detection of Tetrahydrocannabinol in Human Urine
by Je-Wei Lan, Chia-Hsu Hsieh, I-Yu Huang, Yu-Cheng Lin, Tsung-Yi Tsai and Chua-Chin Wang
Sensors 2017, 17(12), 2760; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17122760 - 29 Nov 2017
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 4265
Abstract
This paper presents a highly sensitive flexural plate-wave (FPW)-based microsystem for rapid detection of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in human urine. First, a circular-type interdigital transducer (IDT) was integrated with a circular-type silicon-grooved reflective grating structure (RGS) to reduce insertion loss. Then, with lower insertion [...] Read more.
This paper presents a highly sensitive flexural plate-wave (FPW)-based microsystem for rapid detection of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in human urine. First, a circular-type interdigital transducer (IDT) was integrated with a circular-type silicon-grooved reflective grating structure (RGS) to reduce insertion loss. Then, with lower insertion loss (−38.758 dB), the FPW device was used to develop a novel THC biosensor, and the results reveal that this FPW-THC biosensor has low detection limit (1.5625 ng/mL) and high mass-sensitivity (126.67 cm2/g). Finally, this biosensor was integrated with field-programmable gate array (FPGA) board and discrete components for prototyping a FPW readout system, whose maximum error was 12.378 kHz to ensure that the linearity of detection up to R-square is equal to 0.9992. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Bio-MEMS for Precision Medicine)
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797 KiB  
Article
Dielectrophoretic Separation of Live and Dead Monocytes Using 3D Carbon-Electrodes
by Yagmur Yildizhan, Nurdan Erdem, Monsur Islam, Rodrigo Martinez-Duarte and Meltem Elitas
Sensors 2017, 17(11), 2691; https://doi.org/10.3390/s17112691 - 22 Nov 2017
Cited by 54 | Viewed by 6743
Abstract
Blood has been the most reliable body fluid commonly used for the diagnosis of diseases. Although there have been promising investigations for the development of novel lab-on-a-chip devices to utilize other body fluids such as urine and sweat samples in diagnosis, their stability [...] Read more.
Blood has been the most reliable body fluid commonly used for the diagnosis of diseases. Although there have been promising investigations for the development of novel lab-on-a-chip devices to utilize other body fluids such as urine and sweat samples in diagnosis, their stability remains a problem that limits the reliability and accuracy of readouts. Hence, accurate and quantitative separation and characterization of blood cells are still crucial. The first step in achieving high-resolution characteristics for specific cell subpopulations from the whole blood is the isolation of pure cell populations from a mixture of cell suspensions. Second, live cells need to be purified from dead cells; otherwise, dead cells might introduce biases in the measurements. In addition, the separation and characterization methods being used must preserve the genetic and phenotypic properties of the cells. Among the characterization and separation approaches, dielectrophoresis (DEP) is one of the oldest and most efficient label-free quantification methods, which directly purifies and characterizes cells using their intrinsic, physical properties. In this study, we present the dielectrophoretic separation and characterization of live and dead monocytes using 3D carbon-electrodes. Our approach successfully removed the dead monocytes while preserving the viability of the live monocytes. Therefore, when blood analyses and disease diagnosis are performed with enriched, live monocyte populations, this approach will reduce the dead-cell contamination risk and achieve more reliable and accurate test results. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Bio-MEMS for Precision Medicine)
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Review

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27 pages, 2085 KiB  
Review
dPCR: A Technology Review
by Phenix-Lan Quan, Martin Sauzade and Eric Brouzes
Sensors 2018, 18(4), 1271; https://doi.org/10.3390/s18041271 - 20 Apr 2018
Cited by 361 | Viewed by 31027
Abstract
Digital Polymerase Chain Reaction (dPCR) is a novel method for the absolute quantification of target nucleic acids. Quantification by dPCR hinges on the fact that the random distribution of molecules in many partitions follows a Poisson distribution. Each partition acts as an individual [...] Read more.
Digital Polymerase Chain Reaction (dPCR) is a novel method for the absolute quantification of target nucleic acids. Quantification by dPCR hinges on the fact that the random distribution of molecules in many partitions follows a Poisson distribution. Each partition acts as an individual PCR microreactor and partitions containing amplified target sequences are detected by fluorescence. The proportion of PCR-positive partitions suffices to determine the concentration of the target sequence without a need for calibration. Advances in microfluidics enabled the current revolution of digital quantification by providing efficient partitioning methods. In this review, we compare the fundamental concepts behind the quantification of nucleic acids by dPCR and quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR). We detail the underlying statistics of dPCR and explain how it defines its precision and performance metrics. We review the different microfluidic digital PCR formats, present their underlying physical principles, and analyze the technological evolution of dPCR platforms. We present the novel multiplexing strategies enabled by dPCR and examine how isothermal amplification could be an alternative to PCR in digital assays. Finally, we determine whether the theoretical advantages of dPCR over qPCR hold true by perusing studies that directly compare assays implemented with both methods. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Bio-MEMS for Precision Medicine)
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