Spider silk-based fibre optic sensor gets the measure of glucose

The new light-based sensor developed by a team in Taiwan could eventually find use in measuring blood sugar and other biochemical analytes.

“Glucose sensors are crucial to people with diabetes, but these devices tend to be invasive, uncomfortable and not cost-efficient,” said research team leader Cheng-Yang Liu from National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University. “With spider silk attracting attention for its superior optomechanical properties, we wanted to explore using this biocompatible material to optically detect various sugar concentrations in real-time.”

Liu and colleagues from Taiwan Instrument Research Institute and Taipei Medical University describe their new sensor in Biomedical Optics Express. They show that it can be used to determine concentrations of fructose, sucrose and glucose sugars based on changes in a solution’s refractive index. Spider silk is said to be suited for this application because it can transmit light like an optical fibre and is very strong and elastic.