I-Corps: Portable sensors using the widely available personal glucose monitor

该团队建议利用广泛可用且价格低廉的个人血糖仪（PGM），并使其能够检测非葡萄糖靶标，特别关注糖尿病患者的糖化血红蛋白HbA1c。虽然在文献中已经提出和报道了许多传感器，但很少有传感器被商业化，用于在家庭和野外对大范围目标进行现场和实时定量检测。也许这类传感器中最成功的是PGM，这是30年科学研究和工程努力的结果。然而，PGMs只能检测到一个单一的目标——葡萄糖。利用PI小组最近的一项突破，展示了功能性DNA （DNAzymes和适配体）与酶转化酶结合的使用，该团队现在可以使任何PGM检测范围广泛的目标，从可卡因等娱乐性药物到结核病的干扰素γ等疾病标志物，再到铀等有毒金属离子。该团队建议将这项由美国国家科学基金会支持的基础研究转化为可销售的产品，重点是开发一种新的糖尿病患者家庭测试，同时利用现有的平台和已建立的分销渠道。虽然糖化血红蛋白（HbA1c）是临床证实的糖尿病患者标志物，但其检测主要在中心实验室进行。PGM与功能性DNA的结合是一种简单而新颖的应用，可以彻底改变人们进行家庭和现场测试的方式，使医疗诊断变得更加容易和便宜。如果该团队的首次应用取得成功，同样的技术可以扩展到数十种新的检测中，用于其他目标，如传染病、人类癌症、水和食物中的重金属离子和病原体，所有这些都利用相同的常用pgm。通过广泛使用的PGM，使公众能够轻松获得这项技术，该项目将使实现个人医学的潜力成为可能。

The team proposes to leverage the widely-available and inexpensive personal glucose meter (PGM) and enable it for the detection of non-glucose targets with a particular focus on the glycated hemoglobin HbA1c in diabetic patients. While numerous sensors have been proposed and reported in the literature, few sensors have been commercialized for on-site and real-time quantitative detection of a wide-range of targets at home and in the field. Perhaps the most successful of such sensors is the PGM as a result of 30 years of scientific research and engineering effort. However, PGMs can detect only a single target--glucose. Taking advantage of a recent breakthrough in the PI's group in demonstrating the use of functional DNA (DNAzymes and aptamers) conjugated to an enzyme invertase, the team can now enable any PGM to detect a wide range of targets from recreational drugs like cocaine to disease markers like interferon-gamma of tuberculosis to toxic metal ions like uranium. The team proposes to translate this NSF-supported fundamental research into marketable products by focusing on developing a new at-home test for diabetic patients while taking advantage of an existing platform and established distribution channel.While glycated hemoglobin HbA1c is a clinically proven marker for diabetic patients, testing for it is mostly administered in central labs. The combination of a PGM with functional DNA is a simple and novel application that can revolutionize the way people perform at-home and in-field tests, making medical diagnostics significantly easier and cheaper. If the team is successful with this first application, the same technology can be expanded into dozens of new assays for other targets such as infectious diseases and human cancer and heavy metal ions and pathogens in water and food, all of which leverage the same commonly available PGMs. In making the technology easily accessible to the public through the widely available PGM, this project will make it possible to realize the potential of personal medicine.