Molecular biosensing for medical applications

An important challenge in today’s societies is that life expectancy and the prevalence of chronic conditions are increasing. This puts pressure on the healthcare system and raises a demand for easy to use and cost-effective medical technologies in order to manage chronic conditions outside large institutional healthcare settings. Part of the answer may come from point-of-care testing (in-vitro) and patient monitoring devices (on-body or in-body) which will enable to remotely monitor the progress of patients, to personalize treatment, and to reduce the number of visits needed to the hospital. In this talk I will review the use of nano- and microparticles for molecular biosensing applications. Particles have the advantage of a large surface-to-volume ratio, convenient bio-functionalization, and large signals for detection. I will focus on stationary-fluidic architectures in which fluid manipulation is minimized, based on magnetic and plasmonic particles.