新的微型贴片可能在血液测试中消除对针的需要

新的微型贴片可能在血液测试中消除对针的需要

Hate needles? Well, have we got good news for you.

讨厌针吗?嗯，我们有好消息要告诉你。

In an attempt to combat our reliance on needles for diagnostic testing, engineers from the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis have created a microneedle patch that is attached to the skin and can detect trace amounts of disease biomarkers with extreme sensitivity, replacing the lengthy process of blood draws. Studded with tiny microneedles, the patches may look sinister but are supposedly "pain-free", and can even be used by the patient without supervision in the comfort of their own home.

为了克服我们在诊断测试中对针的依赖，来自圣路易斯华盛顿大学麦凯维工程学院的工程师们发明了一种微针贴片，它附着在皮肤上，并能以极高的灵敏度检测微量的疾病生物标记物，取代漫长的抽血过程。这种贴片上布满了微小的微针，看起来可能很邪恶，但实际上是“无痛”的，甚至可以让病人在自己舒适的家中，在没有监督的情况下使用。

Many diseases can be diagnosed through the detection of proteins that circulate in the blood – whether that be as a consequence of the disease, such as inflammatory markers that may highlight the presence of autoimmune disorders, or molecules that directly cause diseases, such as from pathogens or drugs. These biomarkers provide a rapid method for diagnosis and testing, but current techniques require invasive and expensive procedures of blood drawing and lab testing before results can be received.

许多疾病都可以通过检测血液循环中的蛋白质来诊断——无论是疾病的结果，如可能凸显自身免疫性疾病存在的炎症标志物，还是直接导致疾病的分子，如病原体或药物。这些生物标志物为诊断和检测提供了一种快速的方法，但目前的技术需要侵入性和昂贵的抽血和实验室检测程序，才能得到结果。

Jack Dunhill

Instead, the patches utilize another source of these biomarkers – the dermal interstitial fluid (ISF). This fluid exists between blood vessels and cells, containing nutrients and a variety of important molecules needed for all the cellular processes in the body, and making up around 26% of the body’s water. Reaching the dermal ISF is easy, requiring a tiny puncture just below the skin surface.

相反，贴片利用了这些生物标志物的另一来源——真皮间质液(ISF)。这种液体存在于血管和细胞之间，含有体内所有细胞活动所需的营养物质和各种重要分子，约占人体水分的26%。到达真皮ISF很容易，只需要在皮肤表面下做一个小穿刺。

“They go about 400 microns deep into the dermal tissue,” Professor Srikanth Singamaneni, whose lab developed the microneedle patches, said in a statement. “They don’t even touch sensory nerves.”

“它们能深入到真皮组织约400微米，”斯里坎斯·辛加马尼教授在一份声明中说，他的实验室开发了这种微针贴片。“它们甚至不触及感觉神经。”

To tap into this incredible diagnostic resource, the microneedle patch needs to be extremely sensitive. Although the ISF is rich in biomarkers, difficulty drawing enough from the body for reliable testing has previously made them not viable for clinical use. So, the engineers employed tiny fluorescent labels that glow in the presence of the target biomarkers, called plasmonic-fluors. These nanoprobes have exploded in popularity amongst researchers recently, owing to their incredible sensitivity that is nearly 800 times the sensitivity of conventional fluorescent markers. Alongside that, plasmonic-fluors were markedly faster, allowing them to be utilized in a patch for a quick test.

为了利用这种难以置信的诊断资源，微针贴片必须非常敏感。尽管ISF含有丰富的生物标记物，但难以从人体中提取足够的生物标记物进行可靠的检测，这使得ISF无法用于临床。因此，工程师们使用了微小的荧光标记，在目标生物标记物面前发光，称为等离子体荧光。这些纳米探针最近在研究人员中大受欢迎，因为它们惊人的灵敏度，几乎是传统荧光标记灵敏度的800倍。除此之外，等离子体荧光明显更快，允许它们在一个贴片中用于快速测试。

When used on mice for a variety of different biomarkers, the patches were effective at testing, whilst not suffering the drawbacks of tissue destruction and patient disturbance that repeated blood sampling has.

当用在小鼠身上作为多种不同的生物标志物时，贴片在测试中是有效的，同时不会像重复抽血那样存在组织破坏和患者不适的缺陷。

The researchers now hope the patches, with more testing, could be used in clinical settings for either constant biomarker monitoring, such as COVID-19 testing (which plasmonic-fluors have shown incredible promise in already), or instant diagnostics in emergency rooms.

研究人员现在希望，带有更多检测功能的贴片可以用于临床环境，用于持续的生物标志物监测，如COVID-19检测(等离子体荧光已经显示出令人难以置信的前景)，或用于急诊室的即时诊断。

“When someone complains of chest pain and they are being taken to the hospital in an ambulance, we’re hoping right then and there, the patch can be applied,” said Jingyi Luan, one of the lead authors of the paper.

“当有人抱怨胸痛，然后被救护车送往医院时，我们希望马上就能贴上贴片，”该论文的主要作者之一栾婧一(音)说。

For now, the patches must be validated for a variety of conditions, and undergo rigorous clinical trials before they can be approved. The current study is a proof-of-concept in mice, and many biomarkers will need to be verified for direct links to disease before the patches will be of use.

目前，贴片必须经过多种条件的验证，并在获得批准之前进行严格的临床试验。目前的研究是在老鼠身上进行的概念验证，在贴片使用之前，许多生物标记物需要验证与疾病的直接联系。