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Clickable Outer Membrane Biosensors (COMBs)

- An aptamer-based approach to a universal and modular biosensor platform

The technology and knowledge available to us today have led to ground-breaking drug discoveries. For many diseases, however, the foundation of curing lies not exclusively in the availability of these sophisticated drugs, but rather in an accurate and early diagnosis .

An illustrating example is intestinal cancer. The survival rate of patients diagnosed with intestinal cancer in the early stage is 90%, whereas the survival rate of patients diagnosed in the critical stage is a meagre 13% [1]. An accurate and early diagnosis saves lives.

Analytical instruments such as MRI scanners, NMR spectrometers and mass spectrometry can provide rich information on the structure and concentration of disease markers, enabling sound diagnoses. Although these instruments have thereby revolutionized modern medicine, they have a profound disadvantage: samples often need to be pre-treated and patients have to face long waiting times.
Due to this disadvantage, biosensors have found their way into society. In contrast to analytical instruments, these biosensors can quickly diagnose disease, can be used on-site and are often easy to use. Many of these biosensors have already been developed, but a universal approach is lacking. That is where we come in, as we have developed a universal membrane sensor for biosensors, which we call Clickable Outer Membrane Biosensors, shortly COMBs.