Perspectives on Biosensor Applications

The healthcare industry has transformed over the last twenty-five years due to the co-development of diagnostics along with state-of-the-art therapeutics and treatments; notably, this has led to the field of companion diagnostics. The best example of this is the prescribed use of insulin based on glucose levels monitored via test strips or the continuous glucose monitor. The future goal of medicine is to have truly personalized treatment protocols based on an individual’s biometrics, physiology, and exposure.  

However, this goal requires further identification and quantitation of biomarkers and health exposures, both biological and chemical, both at the point-of-care as well as in real-time.  Therefore, technologies are needed that can miniaturize current diagnostics to make them inexpensive, simple-to-use, and ideally wearable. 

However, where and what to sense remains a critical question to solve, as each biofluid, including blood, sweat, saliva, tears, breath, and exhaled breath condensate contains a different profile of biomarkers. Additionally, biomarkers have vastly different physiochemical properties and abundances, which present different challenges as well as require a range of sensing modalities.  Therefore, this course will be an overview of the “What, Where, and How of Sensing to Meet Current and Future MedTech Needs”.  At the end of the course, a perspective of where these technologies can impact the future of health outcomes will be presented as well as key considerations for future technologies to gain commercial acceptance

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Dr. Michael Brothers, PMP currently is a Principal Scientist and Technical Program Manager at UES, a Blue Halo Company. In these roles, Dr. Brothers supervises contractors executing research to identify biomarkers indicative of human performance, develop novel sensors, as well as field research. Dr. Brothers also serves as a subject matter expert on biochemical sensors, both in the liquid phase and gas phase, for the 711th Human Performance Wing at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. 

Notably, Dr. Brothers has co-authored multiple publications and patents on using novel sensing modalities to sense in complex fluids and environments, including jet fuel, sweat, saliva, and breath. Dr. Brothers has also served as the Principal Investigator on sensor development efforts for both optical based gas sensors and flexible, ink-printed gas sensors for wearable applications.  

Dr. Brothers has his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in Chemical Biology and his B.S. in Chemistry and Biology from the University of Cincinnati.