Recent trends in biosensors

Rapid advances in biosensors have recently been reported. This has been possible due to rapid growth in the development of new biomaterials such as conducting polymers, copolymers and sol gels etc and the reported improvements in sensing techniques. Biosensors are miniaturized devices employing biochemical molecular recognition as the basis for a selective analysis. The response generated as a result of biochemical reaction is detected by a transducer to give a signal (optical/electrical/thermal) that can be used with or without amplification for the estimation of the concentration of an analyte in a given test sample. Among the various biosensors, electrochemical sensors, especially amperometric biosensors presently hold a leading position. Due to specificity, portability, simplicity, high sensitivity, potential ability for real-time and on-site analysis coupled with the speed and low cost, biosensors have been projected to have applications in food analysis, environment control, clinical detection, drug and agriculture industries etc. Besides this, biosensors offer exciting opportunities for numerous decentralized clinical applications, ranging from emergency room screening, home self testing and alternative site testing, continuous and real-time in vivo monitoring. New generation of biosensors combining new bioreceptors with the ever-growing number of transducers is emerging. The present paper highlights some of the recent advances in the area of biosensors contributed by our laboratory. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.