Prof. YAN Feng, Associate Director of the Research Institute for Intelligent Wearable Systems (RI-IWEAR) and Chair Professor of Organic Electronics in the Department of Applied Physics, and his team were awarded a gold medal at the 48th International Exhibition of Inventions of Geneva in 2023, for their confirmation, for the first time, of a strong correlation between saliva glucose and blood glucose levels. The team developed non-invasive, highly sensitive glucose sensors capable of detecting glucose levels in saliva, as well as other metabolites such as uric acid, ascorbic acid, dopamine and cholesterol. The invention provides an alternative to the conventional, painful finger prick blood test for diabetes.
Prof. Yan has dedicated his research to developing high-performance biosensors for healthcare monitoring and disease diagnosis. The inventions by Prof. Yan’s group have contributed to the accurate, continuous and non-invasive monitoring of patients. Among their many inventions, the researchers developed flexible, lightweight and low-cost bioelectronic devices that can conform to the curvilinear surfaces of the human body to achieve comfortable and unobtrusive monitoring. The ultraflexible organic transistor array that they developed for wearable electrocardiogram (ECG) mapping has made heart monitoring services more convenient and user-friendly. They also developed a biosensor that detects protein biomarkers, thus facilitating the early detection of cancer.
Most recently, the team has focused on the fast detection of ribonucleic acid (RNA) and immunoglobulin G (IgG), which is useful for the diagnosis and prevention of pandemics such as COVID-19. They fabricated biosensors which can be arrayed on glass or plastic substrates to support large-scale simultaneous biosensing, and whose shapes can be designed to support wearable biosensing. Prof. Yan’s team has also designed sensor meters and mobile apps for remote testing, thus supporting the early detection of diseases and personalised treatment, and hence, better health management.
