Biosensors in Endocrinology - Review Article

Biosensors are classes of sensors in which at least a biological process is used in sensing procedure. they are generally composed of three parts: a sensing element,a transducer,and a signal processor (or detector). they can be categorized by type of sensing materials or by detection techniques. from their invention time up to now,various biological spe-cies have been analyzed using variety of biosensors. they have been widely used for environmental,industrial,phar-maceutical and clinical applications in many research papers. perhaps the number of biosensors which had a chance to commercialize and enter to the market is limited,but by recent developments in science and technology,day-by-day,the number of commercial biosensors are growing. their importance in clinical medicine can be found in determina-tion of biomarkers for early diagnosis of disease or for control and manage of them in point-of-care devices. diagno-sis and control of many endocrine diseases and metabolic disorders depend strongly on determination of chemicals,hormones and antibodies. a large number of biosensors research studies have focused on determination of these bi-omolecules. one of the famous commercial biosensor is widely used in management of diabetes is glucometer. they are portable commercial biosensors which measure the amount of glucose in a blood drop. the main challenges in designing biosensors are decrease the limit of detection,increasing the sensitivity and accuracy in an analysis,increas-ing lifetime and miniaturization. even scientists are now trying to develop biosensors for non-invasive measurements of biomarkers in saliva or tears.