Researchers develop technology for real-time monitoring of Parkinson's treatments

Sungkyunkwan University researchers have developed a biochip technology that enables real-time monitoring of Parkinson’s disease treatment responses.

The university said Tuesday that the “organoid-on-a-chip” technology combines stem cell-derived “mini-brains” with a nanoplasmonic sensor that maximizes light-matter interactions, enabling real-time monitoring of treatment responses.

The findings were published in ACS Nano, a leading international journal in nanoscience.

The study was conducted by two research teams at the university, each led by Kim In-ki and Park Jong-chan, professors in the Department of Biophysics.

The teams included Ph.D. candidates Cho Han-jun and Kim Young-jun and master’s candidate Yoon Na-hyun, who were both first authors of the paper.

“This study is significant in that it opens a path to continuously monitoring drug responses in living human tissue over time using an ultra-precision optical sensor,” professor Kim said.

“We will further develop the technology into a key platform for patient-specific drug development and disease treatment,” he added.

An organoid is a three-dimensional “miniorgan” grown from human stem cells to resemble an actual organ.

The researchers created an organoid that mimics the brainstem, a key region that connects the brain and spinal cord and regulates vital functions such as breathing and movement.

Parkinson’s disease is a major neurodegenerative disorder in which dopamine-producing cells involved in controlling movement become damaged, causing symptoms such as tremors and muscle stiffness.

In conventional drug development research, cells often had to be destroyed or specially stained to assess how a drug works.

This made it difficult to continuously monitor when a drug begins to take effect and how long its effects last in living tissue.

The research team addressed this limitation by harnessing a phenomenon known as optical resonance, which occurs when light interacts with gold nanostructures much smaller than the width of a human hair.

The researchers attached an artificial DNA molecule called an aptamer, which specifically responds to dopamine, to a sensor surface combining gold nanoholes with a vertical optical resonator.

This enabled the researchers to detect the amount of dopamine released from the brainstem organoids with ultrahigh sensitivity without damaging the tissue.

The researchers monitored the response of Parkinson’s disease brainstem organoids in real time for 12 hours using a microfluidic chip that precisely delivers culture media and drugs through tiny channels.

The study showed that increasing the drug concentration does not necessarily lead to greater therapeutic effects.

Based on these findings, the researchers identified an optimal dosage that showed the most favorable therapeutic response for patients.

The findings demonstrate that the platform can accurately measure over time when a drug begins to take effect, when it reaches its maximum effect and how long the effect lasts in a model that mimics human brain tissue.

The technology is expected to help shorten drug development timelines and reduce costs by narrowing the gap between animal studies and human clinical trials.