Project Summary
Therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) is a branch of clinical pharmacology and clinical chemistry focused on the
measurement of drug concentrations, typically in serum or plasma. Quantifying a drug concentration in the body
enables a clinician to tailor/optimize prescribed drug dosages to the individual patient, based on establishing and
understanding the associated pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic relationships of drug metabolism, which
can vary drastically between patients. Thus, TDM is critical toward personalizing patient treatment plans and
enabling precision medicine for improved patient care and outcomes. However, there is currently no simple,
rapid (<15 min), easy-to-use, and inexpensive device that can accurately measure drug levels from a given
sample. In response to this technology gap, during this program, Electronic BioSciences (EBS), in collaboration
with a highly interdisciplinary team of field experts, will develop a truly unique, enabling, and state-of-the-art TDM
technology that overcomes the known target characterization problems that have plagued the
biosensor/immunoassay field for years. During this project, EBS will be focusing specifically on antiepileptic drug
monitoring, a subset of TDM that has an urgent and pressing need for improved characterization methods, along
with a significant commercial potential for the proposed technology once it is developed. However, it should be
noted that the technology and associated methodology developed during this program will be transferable to
other TDM applications, including but not limited to antibiotics, immunosuppressants, antipsychotics, etc.