Real-time Monitoring of Biomarkers in Serum for Early Diagnosis of Target Disease

Abstract

Real-time monitoring of biomarkers has important applications in immediately determining, for example, disease progress or therapeutic effects to clinical decisions in the fields of diagnosis, prognosis and therapy. However, technologies developed in this area require frequent sample drawings, unattended analysis in situ, secure online monitoring, and, above all, patient’s safety, so from this point of view are still in their infancy. Current research activity in the area has been restricted to the extent of monitoring physical signals while glucose is the only biomarker generally monitored in real-time. To realize the future of unattended analysis, our research group has investigated various immuno-analytical concepts that enable, in particular, repetitive measurements of target biomarkers in a continuous or semi-continuous manner. The key actors in these achievements were monoclonal antibodies with unique characteristics, raised in our group, that potentially allow for real-time monitoring of target disease markers from tiny ionic molecules to complex proteins. Furthermore, we have investigated surrogate elements (e.g. receptors and cytokines) that translate cellular response to measurable signals, enabling us to determine the functional properties of analytes. In this review, continuous and semi-continuous monitoring techniques of different markers for acute myocardial infarction are presented.