Real-time monitoring of cardinal biomarkers is simply a captious prerequisite for early illness test and personalized therapy. Early discovery of liver usability impairment peculiarly relies connected nan measurement of serum alanine aminotransferase (ALT). However, accepted methods, including electrochemical, colorimetric, and fluorescence-based assays, often suffer from operational complexity, precocious cost, and constricted sensitivity, making them inadequate for "rapid, real-time, and low-cost" discovery needs successful objective intraoperative monitoring aliases home-based wellness management. Therefore, nan improvement of a novel, convenient, and highly delicate ALT discovery strategy holds important objective worth and exertion potential.
Recently, nan investigation squad led by Prof. Hanyang Li astatine Harbin Engineering University has integrated functionalized liquid crystal (LC) microcavities pinch whispering-gallery-mode (WGM) laser exertion to found a caller real-time biosensing level (Figure 1), enabling highly delicate discovery of ALT.
Construction of functionalized LC microcavity sensor
The squad introduced stearic acerb arsenic a functional molecule wrong nan LC microcavities. Leveraging its pH-responsive properties, nan strategy tin make a pronounced optical consequence to pH variations induced by nan ALT-catalyzed enzymatic reaction. These pH changes change interfacial anchoring conditions, driving reversible transitions of LC molecules betwixt radial and bipolar configurations. The resulting molecular predisposition changes straight modulate nan effective refractive scale of nan microcavity, thereby inducing a measurable redshift successful nan WGM laser resonance wavelength. This system allows for real-time, label-free optical sensing of ALT enzymatic activity.
In vitro and successful vivo ALT detection
The normal reference scope for ALT is typically 0-40 U/L, pinch captious thresholds astatine 40, 80, and 200 U/L being peculiarly applicable for early liver wounded diagnosis. Experimental results demonstrated a highly linear relationship betwixt ALT attraction (0-240 U/L) and guidance completion time, achieving a sensitivity of 0.67 s/(U/L). Based connected some nan guidance completion clip and spectral highest dynamics, nan level enables graded information of mild (40-80 U/L), mean (80-200 U/L), and terrible (>200 U/L) liver injury, providing a quantitative model for much refined liver usability assessment.
To further validate nan objective applicability of nan projected ALT biosensing approach, successful vivo tests were conducted utilizing rodent serum. The results showed fantabulous statement pinch commercialized ALT assay kits, further demonstrating nan platform's practicality and imaginable for objective translation.
Source:
Journal reference:
Wang, J., et al. (2025) Liquid crystal microcavity biosensors for real-time liver wounded monitoring via WGM laser. Research. doi.org/10.34133/research.0824.
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