Electrochemical biosensors employing nucleic acid aptamers for molecular recognition support the continuous, real-time monitoring of specific small molecules in situ in the living body. They achieve this by monitoring target-induced conformational changes of an aptamer’s structure via electrochemical interrogation of a tethered redox reporter. Because this signaling does not require batch processing and is generated by a specific, conformational change (mimicking the mechanisms employed in naturally-occurring receptors), the platform is continuous, quantitative, and selective enough to deploy directly within the circulatory system of live subjects. Here I discuss how these properties can be exploited to create a feedback control loop that rapidly responds to fluctuations in drug metabolism, thus enabling important applications such as, for example, the high-precision maintenance of therapeutic drug levels, the elimination of subject-to-subject pharmacokinetic variability, and the emulation of human drug exposure levels in rats to optimize dosing.

Real-time, in-vivo feedback control of plasma drug levels guided by electrochemical, aptamer-based measurements

256th National Meeting (2018)

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