Alzheimer’s Disease is the most common cause of dementia. Its diagnosis uses “biomarkers”, the most specific being the increase in levels of tau phosphorylated (p-tau) in CSF. However, the measurement of p-tau in the blood is not yet standardised and only a few laboratories in Italy and a few dozens in the European Union have the expensive equipment necessary for this measurement. It is therefore clear that the advent of a low-cost technology that allows large-scale, user-friendly and highly sensitive screening would represent a potential turning point in the diagnosis of AD. In recent years, EGOT type biosensors with very high sensitivity and low manufacturing costs, addressed to a wide range of analytes, have been realised by several research groups around the world, including the Organic Electronics Laboratory of Unimore (whose head is Professor Fabio Biscarini). Carlo Bortolotti, professor at the Department of Life Sciences, is the coordinator of the interdisciplinary project P-DOT (“Diagnostics of Alzheimer’s Disease with Label Free Organic Transistors”) whose aim is the development of a label-free biosensor for the detection of p-tau in real samples of patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.
Alzheimer’s: an Unimore project to develop a low-cost biosensor for large-scale screening