Development of an on-column affinity smart polymer gel glucose sensor

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Analytical Chemistry
• Polymer Science

Background:

• Accurate glucose monitoring is crucial for diabetes management.
• Existing non-enzymatic glucose sensors often face challenges with sensitivity, stability, or complex fabrication.
• Development of cost-effective and robust glucose sensing platforms is an ongoing need.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and characterize a novel on-column affinity smart polymer gel for non-enzymatic glucose sensing.
• To evaluate the sensor's performance in terms of linearity, limit of detection, stability, and analysis time.
• To validate the sensor's applicability for glucose determination in both standard solutions and real biological samples.

Main Methods:

• Synthesis of a smart polymer (copolymer of 3-acrylamidophenylboronic acid and acrylamide) in situ within a capillary tube.
• Coating the capillary tube with the affinity smart polymer gel to create an on-column detection system.
• Utilizing UV-vis spectrophotometry at 500 nm to detect changes in optical density correlated with glucose concentration within a flow injection system.

Main Results:

• The developed sensor demonstrated a linear dynamic range of 0.5-16.0 mM with a limit of detection of 0.5 mM.
• The affinity smart polymer gel exhibited good stability over 250 consecutive injections (RSD < 5%) with a rapid analysis time of 6 minutes per injection.
• The sensor showed comparable results to the dinitrosalicylic acid (DNS) method for glucose samples and to standard strip tests for urine samples, with acceptable recovery rates (88-103%).

Conclusions:

• The on-column affinity smart polymer gel sensor provides a sensitive, stable, and rapid non-enzymatic method for glucose detection.
• The developed sensor is suitable for analyzing glucose in both controlled solutions and complex biological matrices like urine.
• This approach offers a promising alternative for glucose monitoring applications.