Día Internacional del Alzheimer: Investigaciones en plataformas biosensoras para su detección precoz

De acuerdo con la Sociedad Española de Neurología, el 30 % de los casos de Alzheimer están sin diagnosticar, de ahí la importancia de desarrollar herramientas para su detección precoz.

El grupo BIOUCM del programa TransNanoAvansens investiga el desarrollo de plataformas biosensoras para la detección precoz y seguimiento de enfermedades neurodegenerativas tales como el Alzheimer.

Con motivo del Día Internacional del Alzheimer, celebrado el 21 de septiembre, recopilamos las publicaciones científicas del programa TransNanoAvansens relativas a esta enfermedad, considerada como la nueva epidemia del siglo XXI.

Open Access Phage-Derived and Aberrant HaloTag Peptides Immobilized on Magnetic Microbeads for Amperometric Biosensing of Serum Autoantibodies and Alzheimer’s Disease Diagnosis

A. Valverde, A. Montero-Calle, B. Arévalo, P. San Segundo-Acosta, V. Serafín, M. Alonso-Navarro, G. Solís-Fernández, J. M. Pingarrón, S. Campuzano and R. Barderas. Analysis & Sensing, 1 (2021), in press.

An electrochemical biosensing platform for serum autoantibodies (AAbs) detection is reported in this work, exploiting for the first time six Alzheimer's disease (AD)-specific phage-derived and frameshift aberrant HaloTag peptides as receptors, immobilized on magnetic microbeads (MBs) surface and captured on disposable electrodes to perform amperometric detection. Operational analytical characteristics and clinical diagnostic ability of the bioplatform were probed in optimized key experimental conditions by analysing serum AAbs of AD patients and healthy subjects.

Alzheimer’s disease, autoantibodies,·electrochemical biosensors,·phage-derived peptides,·receptors

Electrochemical immunoplatform to unravel neurodegeneration and Alzheimer’s disease through the determination of neurofilament light protein

A. Valverde, A. Montero-Calle, R. Barderas, M. Calero, P. Yáñez-Sedeño, S. Campuzano, J.M. Pingarrón. Electrochimica Acta, 371 (2021) 137815.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a common neurodegenerative disorder associated with massive degradation of neuronal cell structure due to aging. In recent years, neurofilament light chain (NfL) arises as one of the most promising blood biomarkers for AD. Bioassays available for NfL determination in blood (ELISA kits or Simoa assays) require multiple steps, specialized personnel and expensive instrumentation of application limited to centralized and high-resource environments. With the aim of overcoming these drawbacks, this work reports the first magnetic microbeads (MBs)-based electrochemical bioplatform developed so far for the determination of NfL.

Electrochemical immunoplatform
Neurofilament light protein
Neurodegeneration
Alzheimer's disease
Plasma
Brain tissues

An electrochemical immunosensor using gold nanoparticles-PAMAM-nanostructured screenprinted carbon electrodes for tau protein determination in plasma and brain tissues from Alzheimer patients

C.A. Razzino, V. Serafín, M. Gamella, M. Pedrero, A. Montero-Calle, R. Barderas, M. Calero, A.O. Lobo, P. Yañez-Sedeño, S. Campuzano, J.M. Pingarron. Biosensors & Bioelectronics, 163 (2020) 112238.

This work reports a new sensitive strategy for the determination of tau protein, a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease (AD), involving a sandwich immunoassay and amperometric detection at disposable screen-printed carbon electrodes (SPCEs) modified with a gold nanoparticles-poly(amidoamine) (PAMAM) dendrimer nanocomposite (3D-Au-PAMAM) covalently immobilized onto electrografted p-aminobenzoic acid (p-ABA).  The great analytical performance of the immunosensor in terms of selectivity and low limit of detection (LOD) (1.7 pg mL−1) allowed the direct determination of the target protein in raw plasma samples and in brain tissue extracts from healthy individuals and post mortem diagnosed AD patients, using a simple and fast protocol.

Tau protein
Dendrimer nanocomposite
Screen-printed electrode
Amperometric sandwich immunoassay
Raw plasma
Brain tissue

Review – Enlightening the advancements in electrochemical bioanalysis for the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative disorders

Serafín, M. Gamella, M. Pedrero, A. Montero-Calle, C.A. Razzino, P. Yáñez-Sedeño, R. Barderas, S. Campuzano, J.M. Pingarrón. Journal of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Analysis, 189 (2020) 113437.

Neurodegenerative disorders (NDD), and particularly Alzheimer's disease (AD), are one of the greatest challenges facing our current medicine and society because of its increasing incidence and the high burden imposed both on patients’ families and health systems. Despite this, their accurate diagnosis, mostly conducted by cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) analysis or neuroimaging techniques, costly, time-consuming, and unaffordable for most of the population, remains a complex task. In this situation, electrochemical biosensors are flourishing as promising alternative tools for the simple, fast, and low-cost diagnosis of NDD/AD.

Neurodegenerative disease disorders
Alzheimer disease
Electrochemical detection
Immunosensors
Aptasensors
Biofluids