The engineers of the Tufts University have developed a “tattoo“Who will be able to tell you how much oxygen you are using during exercise, measure blood glucose level at any time of day, monitor a number of different blood components or exposure to environmental toxins.
The device was developed with a silk-based material that goes under the skin that glows more or dims under a lamp when exposed to different levels of oxygen in the blood.
The results of the Research have been published in the scientific journal Advanced Functional Materials.
This is how the tattoo developed by medical bioengineering works
The new tattoo-sensor, which until now has been limited to reading the oxygen levels, is made up of a gel formed by the protein components of silk, called fibroin. Silk fibroin proteins have particular properties that make them particularly compatible as an implantable material.
Once reassembly into a gel or film takes place, they can be adjusted to create a texture that lasts under the skin from a few weeks to over a year. When silk breaks down, it is compatible with the body and is unlikely to invoke an immune response.
Substances in the blood such as glucose, lactate, electrolytes and dissolved oxygen offer a window are particularly important elements for the health and efficiency of the organism. In healthcare settings, they are tracked by drawing blood or by being tied to bulky machines.
Being able to continuously monitor oxygen and glucose levels non-invasively in any environment could be a huge benefit when monitoring certain conditions of some patients such as people diagnosed with diabetes who need to draw blood in order to be able to monitor their glucose. often on a daily basis, to decide what to eat or when to take medications. On the contrary, the aim of the Tufts team is to make monitoring much easier by making the moment of glucose check a totally straightforward practice.
“Silk provides an amazing confluence of many great properties“, he has declared David KaplanStern family engineering professor at the Tufts University School of Engineering and lead researcher of the study. “We can turn it into films, sponges, gels and more. Not only is it biocompatible, but it can contain additives without changing its chemistry, and these additives can have sensing capabilities that detect molecules in their environment. The oxygen sensor is a proof of concept for a range of sensors that we could create ”.
The chemistry of silk proteins makes it easier for them to collect and retain additives without changing their properties. To create the blood glucose and oxygen tattoo sensor, the team of developers used an additive called PdBMAP, which glows when exposed to light of a certain wavelength. That glow has an intensity and duration proportional to the oxygen level in the environment.
The silk gel is permeable to the fluids that surround it, so the PdBMAP detects the same oxygen levels in the surrounding blood. PdBMAP is also useful because it glows, or phosphorescent, when exposed to light that can penetrate the skin. Other candidate sensors can only respond to wavelengths of light that cannot penetrate the skin.
Scientists have relied more on the duration component of the phosphorescence to quantify oxygen levels because the intensity of the glow can vary with implant depth and size, skin color, and other factors. The duration of the glow decreases as oxygen levels increase.
In the experiments, the implanted tattoo sensor detected oxygen levels in laboratory mice in real time and accurately monitored high, low and normal oxygen levels.. The importance of being able to monitor oxygen levels in patients grew in public awareness with the COVID-19 pandemic, in which patients had to be hospitalized for hospital treatment when their oxygen levels had become extremely low.
“We can imagine many scenarios where a tattoo-like sensor under the skin can be useful“, he has declared Tom Falcucci, a graduate student in Kaplan’s lab who developed the tattoo sensor. “It usually happens in situations where someone with a chronic condition needs to be monitored for an extended period of time outside of a traditional clinical setting. We could potentially track multiple blood components using an array of sensors under the skin. “
Tattoo-like sensors are the latest biomedical engineering creations belonging to a growing kit of potential medical products derived from silk proteins in Kaplan’s lab, ranging from orthopedic implants to scaffolding for creating new tissue. in the heart and in the bones.
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