HOUSTON – Rice University synthetic biologists have found a way to piggyback on the glucose monitoring technology used in automated insulin dosing systems and make it universally applicable for the monitoring and dosing of virtually any drug.
In a recently published study in Nature Communications, researchers in the lab of Caroline Ajo-Franklin demonstrated the technique by modifying a blood-glucose sensor to detect the anticancer drug afimoxifene , an estrogen inhibitor that patient’s bodies also make after they take the chemotherapy tamoxifen.
By building on mature biosensing technology that’s commercially available at most drug stores for under $20, Ajo-Franklin’s team hopes to speed the development of automated dosing systems for chemotherapies and other drugs as well as other technologies for real-time monitoring of biomarkers in the blood.
