Continuous monitoring of biomarkers is essential for early disease detection, treatment evaluation, and personalized health management, yet most clinical tests rely on invasive, single-point blood sampling. Recent advances in aptamer-based wearable electrochemical sensors offer a promising alternative by enabling real-time, continuous tracking of physiological signals directly in or on the body. These sensors leverage the unique properties of nucleic acid aptamers—high specificity, reversible binding, and structural programmability—to detect a wide range of biomarkers with high sensitivity. By integrating aptamers with flexible electronics, electrochemical transduction, and wearable platforms, this emerging technology provides dynamic insights into health status that conventional diagnostics cannot capture.
Biomarkers such as hormones, metabolites, inflammatory factors, and disease-related proteins provide critical information about physiological and pathological states. However, traditional biomarker detection typically depends on venous blood sampling followed by laboratory analysis, which is invasive, time-consuming, and poorly suited for continuous monitoring. Existing wearable sensors often rely on antibodies or enzymes, which suffer from limited stability and irreversible binding, restricting long-term use. In contrast, aptamers—short single-stranded nucleic acids selected in vitro—exhibit excellent stability, tunable binding kinetics, and reversible target recognition. Based on these challenges, there is a strong need to develop robust, regenerable, and wearable sensing technologies for continuous biomarker monitoring.
Researchers from Sun Yat-sen University and collaborating institutions reported recent advances in aptamer-based wearable electrochemical sensors in a review published (DOI: 10.1038/s41378-025-00993-5) in Microsystems & Nanoengineering in 2025. The study summarizes how DNA and RNA aptamers can be integrated with electrochemical sensing platforms to enable continuous, real-time biomarker monitoring in vivo. By combining aptamer recognition with flexible electronics, microneedle patches, and non-invasive sampling strategies, the work highlights a new generation of wearable sensors capable of tracking hormones, drugs, inflammatory markers, and metabolic indicators directly from sweat, interstitial fluid, or wound exudate.
The review systematically outlines how aptamers function as powerful biorecognition elements for wearable electrochemical sensors. Unlike antibodies, aptamers are chemically synthesized, highly stable, and capable of reversible binding, making them particularly suitable for continuous sensing. The authors detail key sensor design strategies, including aptamer immobilization on electrode surfaces through gold–thiol bonding, covalent coupling, or biotin–streptavidin interactions.
Electrochemical signal transduction is achieved through two major approaches: impedance-based sensing and redox-probe-based strategies. In the latter, aptamers are labeled with electroactive molecules such as methylene blue or ferrocene, allowing binding-induced conformational changes to be translated into measurable electrical signals.
The review highlights diverse applications, including non-invasive sweat sensors for cortisol and estradiol monitoring, flexible wound dressings that track inflammatory markers and bacterial infection, and minimally invasive microneedle patches for continuous drug and hormone measurement in interstitial fluid. These platforms demonstrate high sensitivity, rapid response, and sensor regeneration capability. Together, these advances show how aptamer-based electrochemical sensors can overcome the limitations of traditional diagnostics and enable dynamic, personalized health monitoring.
"Aptamer-based wearable electrochemical sensors represent a significant step toward truly continuous health monitoring," the authors note. "Their reversible binding behavior and excellent stability address long-standing challenges associated with antibody-based sensors." The team emphasizes that combining aptamers with wearable electronics and minimally invasive sampling technologies opens new possibilities for monitoring complex physiological processes in real time. Such systems could provide clinicians and patients with actionable health data that better reflect dynamic biological changes rather than static laboratory measurements.
Aptamer-based wearable electrochemical sensors have broad implications for healthcare, ranging from chronic disease management and therapeutic drug monitoring to personalized medicine and home-based diagnostics. By enabling continuous, real-time biomarker tracking without repeated blood draws, these devices could improve patient comfort, treatment precision, and early disease detection. Future developments integrating data processing, wireless communication, and multi-biomarker sensing may further enhance their clinical utility. As materials science, biotechnology, and flexible electronics continue to advance, aptamer-enabled wearables are expected to play a central role in next-generation digital health systems.
