Controllable‐Swelling Microneedle–Assisted Ultrasensitive Paper Sensing Platforms for Personal Health Monitoring

• Published in: Advanced healthcare materials Vol. 12; no. 24; p. e2300321
• Main Authors: Hsieh, Yi‐Chia, Lin, Chih‐Yu, Lin, Hsin‐Yao, Kuo, Chun‐Ting, Yin, Shin‐Yi, Hsu, Ying‐Hua, Yeh, Hsiu‐Feng, Wang, Jane, Wan, Dehui
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Germany Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 01.09.2023
• Subjects: Antibiotics; Cefazolin; Cellulose; Colorimetry; Controllability; Drug metabolism; Hyaluronic acid; Hydrogels; Methylene blue; Needles; Nicotine; Pain perception; Paraquat; Polyethylene glycol; Precision medicine; Raman spectroscopy; Reagents; Sensation; Structural integrity; Swelling; colorimetric detection; precision medicine; therapeutic drug monitoring; microneedle patches; surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy
• ISSN: 2192-2640; 2192-2659; 2192-2659
• DOI: 10.1002/adhm.202300321

Microneedle (MN) patches, which allow the extraction of skin interstitial fluid (ISF) without a pain sensation, are powerful tools for minimally invasive biofluid sampling. Herein, an MN‐assisted paper‐based sensing platform that enables rapid and painless biofluid analysis with ultrasensitive molecular recognition capacity is developed. First, a controllable‐swelling MN patch is constructed through the engineering of a poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylate/methacrylated hyaluronic acid hydrogel; it combines rapid, sufficient extraction of ISF with excellent structural integrity. Notably, the analyte molecules in the needles can be recovered into a moist cellulose paper through spontaneous diffusion. More importantly, the paper can be functionalized with enzymatic colorimetric reagents or a plasmonic array, enabling a desired detection capacity—for example, the use of paper‐based surface‐enhanced Raman spectroscopy sensors leads to label‐free, trace detection (sub‐ppb level) of a diverse set of molecules (cefazolin, nicotine, paraquat, methylene blue). Finally, nicotine is selected as a model drug to evaluate the painless monitoring of three human volunteers. The changes in the nicotine levels can be tracked, with the levels varying significantly in response to the metabolism of drug in different volunteers. This as‐designed minimally invasive sensing system should open up new opportunities for precision medicine, especially for personal healthcare monitoring.