Work on biosensors may aid early Alzheimer’s detection

BENGALURU: A cost-effective, easy to use sensor platform to facilitate an earlier stage diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is being developed by a research group led at the Centre for Incubation, Innovation, Research and Consultancy (CIIRC), Jyothy Institute of Technology, in Bengaluru.
Alzheimer’s is an age associated, irreversible, progressive neurodegenerative disorder which eventually destroys memory and cognition skills in affected patients. This disorder affects at least 35 million people globally and it is predicted that one in 85 people will be affected with this by 2050.
“Current diagnostic procedures are difficult and made in an advanced stage Alzheimer’s. Therefore, it is clinically important to find accurate biomarkers by new non-invasive methods that enable early diagnosis and help in monitoring biochemical effects of the treatments,” MS Santosh, who’s leading the CIIRC group, told STOI.
Although cerebrospinal fluid (CSF)—extracted through lumbar puncture—is presently the most reliable source to check Alzheimer’s, considering the difficulty involved in CSF collection procedures, other body fluids such as urine, saliva and in particular, blood are being explored for new biomarkers in addition to the already know peptides and proteins.
However, the presence of AD related biomarkers in other bodily fluids are several times lower than in CSF. Besides, high cost of imaging technologies such as MRI and PET scan and their limited accessibility calls for the development of simple, fast and inexpensive, Santosh said, adding: “We are using a combination of pre-analytical techniques and a sensitive electrochemical sensor for the early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s.”
The project is funded under the ‘Red Biotechnology’ programme of the Indo-French Centre for the Promotion of Advanced Research (IFCPAR) and Santosh has collaborated with his French academic partner Prof Sylvain Lehmann at CHU Montpellier and their industrial partners Dr Shushil Choubey of Transintegra Healthcare Private limited and Bruno Filoche of Spot-To-Lab from India and France respectively.
“The pre-analytical solution adopts a process called dried matrix spot (DMS) or dried blood spot (DBS) which represents a way to stabilize biological fluids on a specific cellulose membrane. When biological fluids such as blood, cerebrospinal fluid, et al are dried on the DMS, they can be sent by post, as this process inactivates pathogens,” Santosh said.
In addition, he said that the biological analytes are stabilized, and can be extracted from the DMS using appropriate protocols. This pre-analytical approach is therefore, well adapted to multisite project and can access biological analytes in remote places non-invasively.
“These biological analytes are immobilized on screen printed electrodes coated with nanoparticles along with a suitable antibody. The antibodies help in carrying out electroanalytical assays within a specified range and can detect biomarkers specific to Alzheimer’s disease at ultra-low levels (Pico grams) level,” Santosh said.
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