Salivary Biosensors: Diagnosing the Nano-Way

As we approach the dawn of genomic medicine, the escalating use of salivary diagnostics will help spur a shift from disease diagnosis to real-time health surveillance. With newly evolving technologies like the biosensors its becoming progressively easy to detect minute quantities of salivary components including mRNA , proteins , cortisol , and others. The domain of salivary diagnostics via salivary biosensors has catapulted into one of dentistry's most promising areas of research. Because of non-invasive nature of salivary collection, point-of-care diagnostics is set to become the Holy Grail for healthcare in 21st century. Coupling this with devices being developed in nanotechnology, we are about to realize portable devices that can revolutionalize the diagnosis of a wide variety of disease conditions on site using an oral sample. A salivary biosensor is a small, self-contained device which utilizes biological reactions for detecting and measuring a particular substance [a salivary biomarker] of interest. The biosensor consists of a biological recognition element in intimate contact with a transducer that translates the bio-recognition event into a useful electrical signal. The commonly used transducers include optical, electrochemical or mass-sensitive elements and generate light, current or frequency signals, respectively. The advantages of using biosensor in salivary diagnostics are that it eliminates the need for a trained technician and also eliminates the risk of contracting infectious disease for both technician and patient. Moreover, it offers detection of malignancies at a sufficiently early stage, and also has implications in bioterrorism surveillance. Parole chiave: Saliva, biosensors, biomarkers, genomics