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 Sylvia Daunert and her lab team at the University of Miami in
Florida are reporting significant progress toward the development of
sensors that would continuously monitor blood sugar levels without
needing blood samples. The results could even be displayed on a
mobile device such as a cell phone.
Today, to keep their blood sugar in a safe range, diabetics must
monitor those levels with a device that pricks the skin to draw a
blood sample for testing.
There are two good reasons to improve that method, the researchers
say. First, and most obvious, is that a test without drawing blood
would be more comfortable.
The other is that a biosensor beneath the skin could give continuous
updates, rather than spot checks of blood samples. That kind of
information would be particularly helpful for monitoring people with
diabetes who are critically ill, or undergoing surgery, the research
team points out in the journal ACS Chemical Biology.
“Currently there are no devices that are able to monitor glucose
continuously for long periods of time. Our designer glucose sensing
peptides will allow (us) to achieve continuous monitoring,” Daunert
told Reuters Health by email.
To build a sensor, Daunert and her team modified a protein to allow
it to bind very tightly to glucose. They also made the protein
fluorescent and gave it the ability to give off a signal when it
binds to glucose: the fluorescence weakens, and the protein darkens.
That signal - the intensity of the fluorescence - “can be measured
by a portable meter and the response wirelessly transmitted to a
smart phone or the cloud,” said John Pickup in email to Reuters
Health. Pickup, a professor of diabetes and metabolism at King's
College London School of Medicine, was not involved in the research.
Today, diabetics can wear insulin pumps, which deliver preset doses
of insulin to the body through catheters placed under the skin – but
those devices still can’t monitor blood sugar levels.
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Daunert envisions the development of implantable catheters that
could sense the changes in the proteins as they bind to glucose.
These sensors may even be tied to an insulin pump, so the pump could
automatically adjust the amount of insulin it’s releasing.
How long until these devices are available? There are still
obstacles to overcome, and no particular method is in line yet for
incorporation into a commercial device. But the researchers are
optimistic.
“First, we need to perform in vivo studies with animals, then humans
and then seek (US Food and Drug Administration) device approval.
Overall, to be on the safe side I would estimate five years until
the catheter biosensors are on the shelf,” Daunert says.
“Whatever the details of methods used for protein engineering, the
papers now appearing on GBP (glucose-binding protein) as a glucose
sensor highlight exciting new opportunities for monitoring glucose
in diabetes by fluorescence,” Pickup says.
Daunert explains more about her “designer protein” for checking
blood sugar in a video on YouTube, here: http://youtu.be/x51o8p8j8Z0.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1qtWBYk ACS Chemical Biology, May 19, 2014.
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