Liver disease is the fifth most common cause of premature death in the Western world, with the irreversible damage caused by fibrosis, and ultimately cirrhosis, a primary driver of mortality. Early detection of fibrosis would facilitate treatment of the underlying liver disease to limit progression. Unfortunately, most cases of liver disease are diagnosed late, with current strategies reliant on invasive biopsy or fragile lab-based antibody technologies. A robust, fully synthetic fluorescent-polymer sensor array is reported, which, rapidly (in 45 minutes), detects liver fibrosis from low-volume serum samples with clinically relevant specificity and accuracy, using an easily readable diagnostic output. The simplicity, rapidity, and robustness of this method make it a promising platform for point-of-care diagnostics for detecting and monitoring liver disease.
Keywords: arrays; fluorescent polymers; liver fibrosis; multichannels; point of care.
© 2018 The Authors. Published by WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.