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Biosensing

Real-time drug pharmacokinetics

Nature Biomedical Engineering volume 1, pages 627–628 (2017)Cite this article

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A new microsensor can simultaneously track drug pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics and the resulting electrophysiological activity in live animals.

To effectively screen drugs for bioavailability and efficacy in different organs1, one would need to track the drug in in vivo microenvironments in real time and simultaneously monitor tissue and organ function. However, this would require an accurate microsensing system that is capable of fast and simultaneous in vivo monitoring of multiple parameters. Also, such a sensor may require significant miniaturization to safely access most organs. Currently available methods for assaying drug kinetics — such as liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS), gas chromatography with MS, microdialysis and optical methods — cannot measure real properties of drugs in vivo because they require considerable quantities of analytes (≥1-mg samples, to be collected manually), or have low temporal resolution (typically, ≥10 min) or spatial resolution (typically, ≥2 mm). Moreover, these techniques do not address how drug kinetics correlate with organ function over time. Furthermore, because the majority of conventional techniques have not been directly combined with other biocompatible sensors that monitor changes in physiological signals, little is known about the relation between localized drug kinetics and their role in altering physiological function in vivo. Reporting in Nature Biomedical Engineering, Hiroshi Hibino and colleagues now demonstrate a drug-sensing system that semi-quantitatively characterizes the kinetics of an intravenous injection of a drug in the microenvironments of the cochlea and brain and at the same time records changes in electrical activity in these organs2.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Neurosurgery, Hofstra Northwell School of Medicine, 500 Hofstra Blvd, Hempstead, NY, 11549, USA

    Chunyan Li & Raj K. Narayan

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  1. Chunyan Li
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  2. Raj K. Narayan
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Correspondence to Raj K. Narayan.

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Li, C., Narayan, R.K. Real-time drug pharmacokinetics. Nat Biomed Eng 1, 627–628 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41551-017-0122-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41551-017-0122-9

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