UCTeam Prague, GLASense, and AixSense Teams win awards

SensUs 2024 Competition

Every year, the annual international SensUs competition on sensors for health challenges student teams from around the world to develop a biosensor for a specific analyte as well as a business plan and live demonstration of their technology. At the event’s grand finale—the SensUs event at the Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands—the teams showcase their developments, exchange knowledge with other teams, and have a good time. By involving students, industry, patients, and healthcare professionals, SensUs strives to accelerate the development and innovation of biosensors and to stimulate education in this field. ECS Institutional Partner PalmSens supports SensUs.

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Dogs are special. There’s no doubt about that.

In fact, they’re so unique that scientists are looking to use what we’ve learned from our furry companions to create new biosensor technology. See, dog’s noses aren’t only good for sniffing other dog’s tails at the park; they offer information. (more…)

Photo Credit: Michael Daniele

A new biosensor has been developed that allows researchers to track oxygen levels in real time in “organ-on-a-chip” systems, according to North Carolina State University. The organ-on-a-chip makes it possible to ensure that bodily systems more closely mimic the function of real organs. The goal is to use these organs-on-a-chip to expedite drug testing and development by evaluating the effectiveness of new drugs with small-scale, biological structures that mimic a specific organ function, such as transferring oxygen from the air into the bloodstream in the same way that a lung does.

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The portable biosensor can test specific cardiac markers in five minutes with a single drop of blood.
Credit: Yu-Lin Wang

A team of researchers from National Tsing Hua University and National Cheng Kung University, both in Taiwan, has developed a low-cost, portable medical sensor package that has the potential to alert users of medical issues ranging from severe heart conditions to cancer, according to a new study published in the ECS Journal of Solid State Science and Technology.

Portable medical devices have become an integral part of holistic health care, exhibiting huge potential in monitoring, medical therapeutics, diagnosis, and fitness and wellness. When paired with benchtop point-of-care instruments used in hospitals and urgent care centers, individuals are able to both increase preventative care measures and gain a more complete picture of their health.

According to the open access paper, “Field-Effect Transistor-Based Biosensors and a Portable Device for Personal Healthcare” (ECS J. Solid State Sci. Technol., 6, Q71 [2017]), researchers have reported the design, development, fabrication, and prototyping of a low-cost transistor-based device that can measure the C-reactive protein (CRP) in bloodstreams, which, when elevated, indicates inflammation that could be linked to heart attack, stroke, coronary artery disease, and a host of other medical diagnosis.

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Image: Assianir

A recent pistachio recall is bringing Salmonella and other foodborne illnesses back into the national spotlight. The popularity of the in-shell pistachio brands recalled paired with the long shelf-life of the nut has health experts concerned for the potential of the foodborne illness to spread rapidly. Many are again asking: how can we better control food safety?

Shin Horikawa and his team at Auburn University believe their novel biosensor technology could resolve many of the current issues surrounding the spread of foodborne illnesses. As the principal scientist for a concept hand-picked for the FDA’s Food Safety Challenge, Horikawa is looking to make pathogen detection faster, more specific, and cheaper.

Faster, cheaper, smarter

“The current technology to detect Salmonella takes a really long time, from a few days to weeks. Our first priority is to shorten this detection time. That’s why we came up with a biosensor-based detection method,” Horikawa, Postdoctoral researcher at Auburn University and member of ECS, says.

Horikawa and his team’s concept revolves around the placement of a tiny biosensor—a sensor so small that it’s nearly invisible to the human eye—on the surface of fresh fruits and vegetables to detect the presence of pathogenic organisms such as Salmonella. This on-site, robust detection method utilizes magnetoelastic (ME) materials that can change their shape when a magnetic field is applied. The materials respond differently to each magnetic field, changing their shapes accordingly. This allows the researchers to detect if a specific pathogen—such as Salmonella—has attached to the biosensor.

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What does Doublemint gum have to do with biomedical research? Apparently, a lot more than would be expected.

A combined research effort from the University of Manitoba and the Manitoba Children’s Hospital has recently created a stretchy, highly sensitive biosensor using chewed gum and carbon nanotubes.

After the gum in chewed for about 30 minutes, it is then cleaned with ethanol and laced with carbon nanotubes. The biosensor has the potential to monitor berating patterns and blood flow.

Even more impressive, the cost for the sensor come in under $3. Researchers believe the cheap, highly flexible biosensor could aid in a multitude of health care applications.

PS: Working in sensor science and technology? Make sure to check out our sensor symposia at the 229th ECS Meeting! Submit your abstract today!