Microfluidic-Based Non-Invasive Wearable Biosensors for Real-Time Monitoring of Sweat Biomarkers.

Wearable biosensors are attracting great interest thanks to their high potential for providing clinical-diagnostic information in real time, exploiting non-invasive sampling of biofluids. In this context, sweat has been demonstrated to contain physiologically relevant biomarkers, even if it has not been exhaustively exploited till now. This biofluid has started to gain attention thanks to the applications offered by wearable biosensors, as it is easily collectable and can be used for continuous monitoring of some parameters. Several studies have reported electrochemical and optical biosensing strategies integrated with flexible, biocompatible, and innovative materials as platforms for biospecific recognition reactions. Furthermore, sampling systems as well as the transport of fluids by microfluidics have been implemented into portable and compact biosensors to improve the wearability of the overall analytical device. In this review, we report and discuss recent pioneering works about the development of sweat sensing technologies, focusing on opportunities and open issues that can be decisive for their applications in routine-personalized healthcare practices.

Luminescent Aptamer-Based Bioassays for Sensitive Detection of Food Allergens.

The presence of hidden allergens in food products, often due to unintended contamination along the food supply chain (production, transformation, processing, and transport), has raised the urgent need for rapid and reliable analytical methods for detecting trace levels of such species in food products. Indeed, food allergens represent a high-risk factor for allergic subjects due to potentially life-threatening adverse reactions. Portable biosensors based on immunoassays have already been developed as rapid, sensitive, selective, and low-cost analytical platforms that can replace analyses with traditional bench-top instrumentation. Recently, aptamers have attracted great interest as alternative biorecognition molecules for bioassays, since they can bind a variety of targets with high specificity and selectivity, and they enable the development of assays exploiting a variety of transduction and detection technologies. In particular, aptasensors based on luminescence detection have been proposed, taking advantage of the development of ultrasensitive tracers and enhancers. This review aims to summarize and discuss recent efforts in the field of food allergen analysis using aptamer-based bioassays with luminescence detection.