Electronic tongues and aptasensors

Abstract

The development of bioinspired sensors has emerged and grown in recent decades, given their broad and exciting applications to pharmaceutical formulations, medical diagnosis and health care. These sensor-based technologies, owing to their function and to the elements involved in their design, potentially generate fast, selective, sensitive, safe and green analysis solutions. Their applications have evolved into mainly two fields. The first comprises sensor array systems like the electronic tongues (E-tongues), which are innovative (bio)sensing devices that, combined with chemometric tools, provide highly specialized responses, enabling the discrimination of thousands of possible targets. The second line of action involves the application of biosensors, namely aptasensors, which are highly specific against a target biomarker. In this chapter, the concept, design and application of electrochemical sensor approaches, such as E-tongues and aptasensors, for (bio)sensing applications, will be discussed and the main trends in medical and pharmaceutical applications will be highlighted.