E!4439, OpenBioSense, KTH

Purpose and goal:

Measuring metabolites such as glucose and ketones is vital in the treatment of some chronic diseases, such as diabetes. Finger pricks are still used due to their affordability, whilst continuous glucose monitors would offer better outcomes. However, their high cost, invasiveness, and low digital integration hinder wider application. The OpenBioSense consortium aims to develop a new way of continuous biosensing to enable insight into our own biology becoming affordable and effective for everyone.

Expected results and effects:

The consortium will develop idi+, a miniaturized and multi-metabolite continuous sensor, to successfully reach clinical trials. The project partners will design and manufacture a microneedle-based sensing system able to detect glucose and at least one other clinically relevant biomarker, such as ketones or succinate, first in-vitro and then validate it in-vivo in clinical studies.

Approach and implementation:

The consortium will develop and test the idi+, a continuous wearable biosensor based on microneedles to be integrated with the freely combinable software platform. The consortium partners have developed, and validated in prototypes, a highly scalable way of producing the sensors, and will use their unique skills in computational biology, microsystems, and software engineering, as well as their broad market network to develop a version of the idi+ sensor suitable for in-human validation.