UC Berkeley

Wearable sensors have been very popular among us to monitor our physical wellness, and they are potentially important for health monitoring with implications toward preventive care and clinical treatment. On the market, noninvasive wearables can be used to track external metrics such as heart rate and ECG signal. However, they fail to inform users about elusive biomarkers at the molecular level, which can potentially provide more insight into a person’s health situation. Traditionally, accessing bio-molecular information requires collecting blood or urine samples with invasive extraction or logistic complications. In this regard, sweat stands out as a great candidate because of its noninvasive property and abundance in biomolecules, such as electrolytes, metabolites, xenobiotic molecules, and heavy metals. Our group has demonstrated noninvasive and multiplexed sensing of biomolecules by interfacing flexible printed circuit boards and electrode arrays. The advantage of this kind of sensor is that it enables real-time monitoring, requires small sample volume, and detects multiple biomolecules simultaneously. The sweat monitoring device allows us to potentially monitor our health statuses and screen diseases. However, a challenge that is equally important to screening diseases is to have an effective treatment that typically involves drug intake. So the question that remains is whether we can monitor drug molecules using a wearable sweat sensor? After an introduction in Chapter 1, we will explore this possibility in Chapter 2. A methylxanthine drug, caffeine, is selected to validate the sensor’s functionalities. Chapter 3 seeks the sensor’s potential applications in clinical settings. The focus is on levodopa, which is typically used for treating patients with Parkinson’s disease. In Chapter 4, the sensing platform is reconfigured for secondhand smoke detection, which can potentially be used by a broader population. In summary, we have demonstrated wearable sweat sensors capable of monitoring selected molecules related to drugs. This work leverages a wearable sweat sensor towards noninvasive and continuous point-of-care drug monitoring and management.