A UCLA-led research team announced on Apr. 17 the development of a new microneedle sensor platform that can continuously monitor drug levels and detect early signs of kidney and liver dysfunction in rats. The findings were published in Science Translational Medicine.
The technology could help personalize healthcare by allowing doctors to track how drugs are processed in the body in real time, potentially enabling earlier intervention if organ function begins to decline. This approach may also expand continuous molecular monitoring to other health conditions where changes over time are important.
According to corresponding author Sam Emaminejad, an associate professor at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, “We show that measurements taken just a millimeter beneath the skin can reveal clinically actionable information about organs deep inside the body. By continuously monitoring certain drugs and how the kidneys or liver process them, we can detect organ dysfunction earlier and guide treatment with greater precision.” The study demonstrated that their microneedle sensors operated for six days in freely moving rats, tracking both chemotherapy drugs processed by the liver and antibiotics cleared by the kidneys.
The new design uses a gold coating with nanoscale cavities on each needle’s surface. This increases sensitivity while protecting sensing molecules from abrasion or buildup of biological material. Jialun Zhu, first author of the study, said, “By increasing the effective surface area to nearly a hundred times that of a smooth microneedle, we created much more room for sensing molecules while also helping protect them during use in tissue — increasing signal while reducing noise.” In experiments involving two weeks of worsening kidney injury followed by recovery treatment in rats, researchers found their sensors detected impaired drug clearance before conventional blood tests indicated any problem.
Emaminejad said future steps include moving toward human studies: “We want to determine whether this kind of monitoring can help prevent damage from antibiotics and chemotherapies. There is a real opportunity to better protect patients from the side effects of powerful therapies by recognizing trouble earlier and adjusting treatment sooner. More broadly, this approach could expand continuous molecular monitoring to many other targets, with the potential to guide care and reveal health problems earlier.”
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