P-33

Detection and determination of concentration of specific proteins in blood serum is a proven method in the medical world to make a correct diagnosis, or to accurately monitor the effect of a therapy on a patient. This is currently being done in clinical laboratories, often associated with a hospital. In practice, the general practitioner or an authorized assistant takes blood from the patient, which is then sent to this laboratory. It then takes a few days before the results arrives, which then returns to the patient via the general practitioner. In many cases, however, this is a far too long time. For patients admitted to the hospital this time can be shortened, but it still requires a few hours until results come back in.

The aim for this project is to make a point-of-care sensor device, with which this determination of concentration can be carried out at the general practitioner, or possibly by the patient himself at home, and where there is a result within a few minutes. In this project we focus on diabetes patients, who regularly have to measure the concentration of insulin in their blood.

Several SMEs are busy developing sensors to measure proteins in blood, but it remains extremely difficult to measure very small proteins such as insulin and c-peptide in low concentrations, while this is essential for monitoring the disease and the subsequent therapeutic actions.

In this project we will look at 2 new techniques that can significantly increase the sensitivity of the sensor, in order to detect much smaller proteins with greater accuracy. This will be demonstrated on the basis of the detection of insulin in blood, because here is a clear question to determine the concentration of blood in a cost-effective, fast, accessible way. Insulin has a molecular weight of only 5.8 kDa, and c-peptide of only 3.6 kDa, and this makes the detection of these two proteins a huge challenge.