Detect, treat and tell: Skin patches to sense infection and indicate recovery.

Populations in low resource settings need easy access to continuous healthcare and medical treatment and there are many contributing factors as to why there is an imbalance when it comes to demand and accessibility. One way that would significantly contribute to tackling this imbalance is to develop devices that can detect, treat and indicate when infection is cleared from the body; specifically, for infected skin wounds.
The overall aim of this project is to bridge the gap between the low availability of healthcare in low resource settings and more advanced healthcare systems available in more developed countries by developing and providing cheap, easy to use, point-of-care devices which will also be readily available for people in low resource settings.
This project will investigate the development of skin patches with the ability to detect a specific disease and, as a result, administer a pre-loaded drug. An initial approach for the device development will involve the use of swellable microneedles, since they have the ability to take in interstitial fluid (ISF) while at the same time releasing a preloaded drug (Caffarel-Salvador et al., 2015. Kolluru et al., 2019). The rate in which the microneedles swell can be controlled by the cross-linking density of the polymers used during fabrication, this can also be used to control the rate of drug release (Wang, Hu and Xu, 2017).
The initial approach leads to developing two symbiotic sections on the same skin patch. Section one will involve swellable microneedles allowing the intake of ISF and the second section will have a functionalised graphene-oxide layer located on top of drug-loaded microneedles. The graphene oxide layer can detect a desired biomarker found in the ISF which will then trigger the release of a preloaded drug. A communication element will be incorporated between the sections of the patch.
The primary advantage of using microneedle-based devices is its reduced invasiveness on comparison to traditional methods since penetrated microneedles will not reach the pain receptors in the dermal layer unlike traditional drug delivery methods e.g. hypodermic needles. Other advantages include: cheaper manufacturing costs and ease of usage meaning that there will be no need to train professionals to apply the patch. The purpose of these devices is to allow quick cheap diagnosis and drug delivery relative to current methods used today.
Following the initial kick off meetings, weekly meetings have been scheduled between myself, Dr Hannah Leese and fellow PhD students working on the same common goal of developing point of care diagnostic methods in low resource settings but taking different approaches. Bi-weekly meetings have been arranged between myself and Hannah to discuss progress and raise any issues and once a month meetings have been discussed between myself and my second supervisor (Dr Pedro Estrella). A skype conference is soon to be set up between myself, Dr Hannah Leese and Dr Michael Thatcher (Abbott Diagnostics) to discuss the project plan and initial progress.
My confirmation will take place in 1 year and a specific date will be arranged closer to the time.
Caffarel-Salvador, E., Brady, A. et al (2015). Hydrogel-Forming Microneedle Arrays Allow Detection of Drugs and Glucose In Vivo: Potential for Use in Diagnosis and Therapeutic Drug Monitoring. PLOS ONE, 10(12), p.e0145644.
Kolluru, C., Gupta, R., et al (2019). Plasmonic Paper Microneedle Patch for On-Patch Detection of Molecules in Dermal Interstitial Fluid. ACS Sensors, 4(6), pp.1569-1576.
Wang, M., Hu, L. and Xu, C. (2017). Recent advances in the design of polymeric microneedles for transdermal drug delivery and biosensing. Lab on a Chip, 17(8), pp.1373-1387.