A Biomimetic Phosphatidylcholine-Terminated Monolayer Greatly Improves the In Vivo Performance of Electrochemical Aptamer-Based Sensors

Angew Chem Int Ed Engl. 2017 Jun 19;56(26):7492-7495. doi: 10.1002/anie.201700748. Epub 2017 Mar 28.

Abstract

The real-time monitoring of specific analytes in situ in the living body would greatly advance our understanding of physiology and the development of personalized medicine. Because they are continuous (wash-free and reagentless) and are able to work in complex media (e.g., undiluted serum), electrochemical aptamer-based (E-AB) sensors are promising candidates to fill this role. E-AB sensors suffer, however, from often-severe baseline drift when deployed in undiluted whole blood either in vitro or in vivo. We demonstrate that cell-membrane-mimicking phosphatidylcholine (PC)-terminated monolayers improve the performance of E-AB sensors, reducing the baseline drift from around 70 % to just a few percent after several hours in flowing whole blood in vitro. With this improvement comes the ability to deploy E-AB sensors directly in situ in the veins of live animals, achieving micromolar precision over many hours without the use of physical barriers or active drift-correction algorithms.

Keywords: aptamers; biomimetic surfaces; electrochemical sensors; in vivo measurements; membrane monolayers.

Publication types

  • Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Animals
  • Aptamers, Nucleotide / chemistry*
  • Biomimetics*
  • Biosensing Techniques*
  • Blood Chemical Analysis / instrumentation
  • Cell Membrane / chemistry
  • Electrochemical Techniques / instrumentation*
  • Phosphatidylcholines / chemistry*

Substances

  • Aptamers, Nucleotide
  • Phosphatidylcholines