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- Optical Biosensors – Illuminating the Path to Personalized Drug Dosing
- Optical Biosensors – Illuminating the Path to Personalized Drug Dosing
Optical biosensors are an exciting technology that combine specific biological elements, such as enzymes, antibodies or aptamers, with optical elements which together can use the interaction of light to measure the concentration of a species. These are already commonly used in healthcare, with sensors like pulse oximeters and heart rate monitors. However, one area of healthcare where they have yet to emerge is drug monitoring. Drug monitoring is a key area of medicine, where measurements of the drug inside the patient can be used to improve the doses and ultimately the outcome of the patient.
In this review, we discuss how optical biosensors can be used for therapeutic drug monitoring. We give an overview of the key principles in optical biosensing, the advances in the field and analyse some of the most recent examples which show promise. We also present the pros and cons of the different optical technologies, including technical and regulatory challenges that need addressing. With optical biosensing poised to be an important technology in the future, this review should the reader to better understand the field and gain insights into the progress being made.
The full article is available here; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bios.2021.113331
