Enzymatic filter for improved separation of output signals in enzyme logic systems towards ‘sense and treat’ medicine

Abstract

The major challenge for the application of autonomous medical sensing systems is the noise produced by non-zero physiological concentrations of the sensed target. If the level of noise is high, then a real signal indicating abnormal changes in the physiological levels of the analytes might be hindered. Inevitably, this could lead to wrong diagnostics and treatment, and would have a negative impact on human health. Here, we report the realization of a filter system implemented to improve both the fidelity of sensing and the accuracy of consequent drug release. A new filtering method was tested in the sensing system for the diagnosis of liver injury. This sensing system used the enzymes alanine transaminase (ALT) and aspartate transaminase (AST) as the inputs. Furthermore, the output of the sensing system was designed to trigger drug release, and therefore, the role of the filter in drug release was also investigated. The drug release system consists of beads with an iron-cross-linked alginate core coated with different numbers of layers of poly-L-lysine. Dissolution of the beads by the output signals of the sensing system in the presence and absence of the filter was monitored by the release of rhodamine-6G dye encapsulated in the beads, mimicking the release of a real drug. The obtained results offer a new view of the problem of noise reduction for systems intended to be part of sense and treat medical devices.