An international team of researchers has developed a wearable, non-invasive device that detects biomarkers of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases and transmits the results wirelessly to a laptop or smartphone.

The team tested the device on in vitro samples from patients and showed that it is highly accurate plans to test saliva and urine samples with the biosensor and use them to detect biomarkers of other diseases.

Details of the prototype are published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Pnas).

“This portable diagnostic system would enable screening for neurodegenerative diseases at home and at healthcare facilities, such as clinics and nursing homes,” he says. Ratnesh Lal, a bioengineer at the University of California, San Diego, and co-author of the paper.

It is estimated that by 2030 there will be approximately 130 million people with dementia in the world.

These neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson’s disease, have invasive detection methods (such as lumbar punctures and imaging tests, such as MRI), which makes early detection difficult.

One hypothesis Lal has focused on is that Alzheimer’s disease is caused by soluble amyloid peptides that bind into larger molecules, which in turn form ion channels in the brain.

Lal wanted to develop a test that could non-invasively detect beta-amyloid and tau peptides (biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease) and alpha-synuclein proteins (biomarker of Parkinson’s) in saliva and urine.

The device is the result of his thirty years of experience, as well as his collaboration with researchers around the world, including co-authors of this work from Texas and China.

To create the device, Lal and his colleagues adapted one developed during the pandemic that detected the spike and nucleoprotein proteins of the live SARS-CoV-2 virus, the details of which they published in Pnas.

How the device works

The device consists of a chip with a highly sensitive transistor, commonly known as a field effect transistor (FET).

For this study, the team tested it with amyloid proteins taken from the brains of deceased Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s patients.

The experiments showed that the biosensors were able to detect the specific biomarkers of both diseases with high precision, at the same level as the most advanced methods.

The device also works at extremely low concentrations, so you need small quantities for samples.

Furthermore, tests showed that the device worked well even when the samples analyzed contained other proteins.

Tau proteins were more difficult to detect, but because the device analyzes three different biomarkers, it can combine the results from all three to get a reliable overall result.

The technology has been approved by the University of California in San Diego to the biotechnology company Ampera Life.

The next steps include analyzing blood plasma and cerebrospinal fluid with the device and finally saliva and urine samples, tests that would be performed in hospitals and nursing homes.

If the tests go well, Ampera Life will apply for FDA approval in five or six months to bring the device to market next year. (JO)