Paper-based Analytical Devices for Therapeutic Drug Monitoring at the Point of Care
Jean-Manuel Segura,
Professor, Institute of Life Technologies,
University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland Valais
Therapeutic Drug Monitoring (TDM) allows for personalized dosage during therapeutic treatments and is often mandatory for modern potent drugs against cancer, infections or in organ transplantation cases. TDM can be performed either based on the analysis of a biomarker such as cholesterol testing in case of statin treatments or based on a quantification of the therapeutic drug itself. A prototypical example is the antibiotics tobramycin, which is often prescribed to neonates in case of bacterial infection and requires TDM to ensure efficacy while avoiding oto- and nephrotoxicity. Currently, the process of TDM is demanding for the patient as several milliliters of blood are required, is slow and costly due to the transfer of sample to a central laboratory, and suffers of limited efficacy owing to the difficulty to interpret the results for a non-specialist. Paper offers many advantages as a material to produce IVD tests as it is cheap, amenable for mass manufacturing, easy to dispose after performing the test and it provides many functionalities for designing a test such as capillary-driven motion of liquids. I will present our most recent results in developing various paper-based IVD tests for therapeutic drug monitoring at the point of care. A particular emphasis will be put on micro-PAD tests for the monitoring of therapeutic antibiotics in the blood and for the joint analysis of glucose and cholesterol.
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