AI Insight
Researchers developed a silicon photonic chip-based sensor that can simultaneously measure two hormone biomarkers in urine: follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) and pregnanediol-3-glucuronide (PdG). The system uses ring resonator technology with a regenerable surface chemistry that allows multiple measurements on the same chip, achieving detection limits of 0.594 ng/mL for FSH and 19.1 ng/mL for PdG in artificial urine. The platform can potentially scale to detect tens of different hormones on a single millimeter-scale chip, offering greater multiplexing capacity than current lateral-flow tests.
Why it matters
This technology could enable affordable, quantitative at-home hormone monitoring panels that would support better understanding and management of women's health conditions. Routine longitudinal hormone testing has been limited by cost and inconvenience, restricting both research and clinical care in this historically under-studied field.
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⚠️ Preprint – Noch nicht peer-reviewed
Dieser Artikel wurde noch nicht von unabhängigen Experten begutachtet. Die Ergebnisse sind vorläufig und sollten mit Vorsicht interpretiert werden.
Hormone dynamics are central to a multitude of conditions in women’s health; however, limitations in the cost, convenience, and multiplexing capacity of current hormone assays preclude routine longitudinal hormone testing. This limitation severely restricts our understanding in this historically neglected field, presenting a need for improved bioanalytical tools to support hormone-informed care. Silicon photonic resonator sensors have excellent multiplexing capacity and scalable fabrication, and offer strong potential to meet this important need. Here we demonstrate, for the first time, multiplexed silicon photonic detection of two urinary hormone biomarkers, follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) and pregnanediol-3-glucuronide (PdG), using sub-wavelength grating ring resonators and a polydopamine-based, regenerable surface chemistry. We combine a sandwich immunoassay for FSH and an antigen-down competitive immunoassay for PdG on the same chip, both amplified using a commercially available quantum-dot-streptavidin conjugate and with on-chip regeneration over multiple measurement cycles. In artificial urine, this proof-of-principle multiplexed assay achieves limits of detection of 0.594 ng/mL for FSH and 19.1 ng/mL for PdG. This architecture is inherently scalable to tens of hormone targets on a millimetre-scale chip (a >10x multiplexing improvement over typical lateral-flow immunoassays) enabling future low-cost, quantitative at-home hormone panels that could transform research, diagnostics, and treatment in women’s health.
Source: Multiplexed hormone immunoassays for women's health on a regenerable silicon photonic chip