Biosensors for Neurodegenerative Diseases

Since the conception of biosensor technology in biomedical research, this field is emerging as a promising and high-throughput tool for neuro-engineering and neurosciences research. It has been postulated that the accumulating property proteins are the basic cause of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and prion diseases. Thus, neurodegenerative diseases are also called “protein misfolding disorders”. Biosensors have a wide range of applications in biomedical research, including optical and electrochemical detection of biometal-protein interactions, detection of biomarkers, such as β-amyloids, apolipoprotein, and tau proteins, and microRNA in blood and cerebrospinal fluid in neurodegenerative diseases. These are composed of primary biological recognition elements that convert the chemical signal into the voltage or current that evaluates the physical signal by preparing a plot of sensor response against the analyte concentration. This chapter presents a bird’s eye view on various aspects of progress in biosensor development with special emphasis on their application, including metal-protein interactions studies, detection of neurotransmitters using aptamers and calixarenes, detection of biomarkers proteins, such as α-synuclein for Parkinson’s disease, apolipoprotein, tau and β-amyloid proteins for Alzheimer’s disease, and prion proteins. The chapter also summarizes the novel materials reported for improved biosensor performance. This chapter will be of high relevance to the biological scientists working in neuro-engineering and neurosciences research