Design of Future Wearable Glucose Biosensors

The future of biosensing holds great promise as technological advancements continue to redefine our approach to healthcare and personal well-being. Biosensors are devices that detect and analyze biological information and are the key elements of this transformative journey. Future wearables will not only track traditional metrics like heart rate and activity but will also offer sophisticated biomarkers for various analytes, enabling early detection of diseases and personalized treatment plans. Glucose is one such particularly important biomarker, the levels of which in various biofluids is indicative of the health and fitness of an individual. Clinical blood glucose tests conducted today are invasive and painful. Moreover, there is no non-invasive continuous monitoring. Due to these limitations, the research community has turned to other biofluids. Among these, sweat is the most popular choice due to its inherent non-invasiveness and ease of access. It has been established that sweat glucose levels have limited correlation with blood glucose levels. The levels of glucose in sweat lie in the range of 0.06 to 0.2 mM. The aim of this work is to propose synthetic receptors for designing such glucose sensors. For the choice of a bioreceptor, we assess various naturally available proteins like Glucose/ Galactose Binding Protein (GGBP), Sugar Binding Proteins, Transport proteins, lectins, etc. The interaction of the protein with glucose is studied using AutoDock. The binding energy of the docked complex is used to rank receptors, validate them via steered molecular dynamics simulations and presented for future glucose biosensor design.