Chronic diseases are becoming more prevalent, and the complexities of managing patients continue to escalate, since their care must be balanced between the home and clinical settings. Diabetes is the most advanced example, where self-monitoring has been shown to be necessary. Glucometers are point-of-care (POC) devices that have become standard platforms at home and clinical settings. Similarly, many other POC biosensors have also been developed. Enzymes are often used in these sensors because of their specificity and the reaction products can be electrochemically transduced for the measurement. When enzymes are immobilized to an electronically active substrate, enzymatic reactions can be transduced by direct electron transport. This paper describes an approach for the development of graphene-based POC devices. This includes modifying enzymes for improved performance, developing methods to bind them to the graphene surface, incorporation of the functionalized graphene on a field-effect transistor (FET), and integration into a microfluidic device suitable for home use. This paper describes an approach for the development of a graphene-based POC biosensor platform using glucose as an example of target molecule

A needle-free device delivers a liquid jet of vaccine that penetrates the buccal mucosa and elicits antibody production in rabbits.

Over the last few years, there has been growing interest in measuring the contractile force (CF) of engineered muscle tissues to evaluate their functionality. However, there are still no standards available for selecting the most suitable experimental platform, measuring system, culture protocol, or stimulation patterns. Consequently, the high variability of published data hinders any comparison between different studies. We have identified that cantilever deflection, post deflection, and force transducers are the most commonly used configurations for CF assessment in 2D and 3D models. Additionally, we have discussed the most relevant emerging technologies that would greatly complement CF evaluation with intracellular and localized analysis. This review provides a comprehensive analysis of the most significant advances in CF evaluation and its critical parameters. In order to compare contractile performance across experimental platforms, we have used the specific force (sF, kN/m²), CF normalized to the calculated cross-sectional area (CSA). However, this parameter presents a high variability throughout the different studies, which indicates the need to identify additional parameters and complementary analysis suitable for proper comparison. We propose that future contractility studies in skeletal muscle constructs report detailed information about construct size, contractile area, maturity level, sarcomere length, and, ideally, the tetanus-to-twitch ratio. These studies will hopefully shed light on the relative impact of these variables on muscle force performance of engineered muscle constructs. Prospective advances in muscle tissue engineering, particularly in muscle disease models, will require a joint effort to develop standardized methodologies for assessing CF of engineered muscle tissues.