Poster session 10: Medical measuring techniques I

Pavel Livshits, Andreas Jupe, Stefan Kahnert, Martin Figge, Stefan Mross, Michael Goertz, Holger Vogt, Andreas Goehlich
2017 Biomedical Engineering  
Infectious diseases are one of the world's leading causes of morbidity and death. In the case of newborns, infections with the Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) are of particular significance. The guarantor of a successful treatment is an early disease diagnosis enabling the accurate patient stratification and prognosis of disease outcome. Conventional diagnostics for the identification of unknown pathogens require large sample volumes and are rather laborious and time-consuming. Therefore,
more » ... d and ultra-sensitive point-of-care diagnostics, which enable faster and more personalized patient treatment for much lower costs, are gaining higher attention. The most critical component of these point-of-care devices is a bio-sensor that detects, with a high degree of precision, specific molecules. In this work, a novel flexural plate wave (FPW) bio-MEMS sensor for the detection of RSV infections in newborns has been successfully designed, fabricated and tested. The sensor targets the detection of chemokines and an RSV protein in swab-samples, thus providing clinicians with reliable information on type and severity of the infection, and consequently enabling the adequate decision on the patient's treatment. The operating principle of the sensor, using the piezoelectric effect, is based on the frequency shift of a resonating membrane due to attachment of an additional mass. The sensor's performance has been experimentally verified. The sensor's surface was functionalized with a layer of capture molecules (the layer is immobilized via click-chemistry) that specifically bind the target molecule. Clear resonant frequency shifts have been observed after the functionalized sensor was brought into contact with aqueous solutions (tris-buffer) of the chemokine, whereas bringing the sensor into contact with a non-target molecule led to hardly any frequency shift. This proves the selectivity of the fabricated device. The detection procedure using the developed sensor takes ca. 15 minutes, whereas with currently employed conventional methods several hours.
doi:10.1515/bmt-2017-5031 fatcat:qoib4woaqrcfpoot3ra547ghtm