The Importance of the team in all the steps of the scientific work – The history of one idea growing and its materialization in a paper

18.06.2019

When I joined KTH to develop my Marie Curie project, Gaston Crespo came to my office telling me that he wanted to start a research line based on wearable sensors for sweat analysis. He was totally convinced that we could do very interesting things in the field and really descried the future of this technology: 'There are still many challenges to overcome before these devices reach the market. And I would like to form part of the key players involved in this exciting road'.

We counted with our experience in electrochemical sensors and the fabrication of fluidic cells (mainly coming from our work in the SCHeMA project with the thin layer cells for halide detections,[1, 2] the desalination cell,[3] the acidification module [4], the flow potentiometric cells and the implementation of all these devices into the submersible probe [5,6]). Then, Marc Parrilla furnished the experience for the fabrication of screen-printed electrodes. And the adventure started...

We read the entire literature about wearable sensors, focusing on wearable potentiometric sensors in particular. We rapidly identified some of the challenges for the technology to advance: the sampling cell and a good validation protocol that establishes the reliability of the device. This gave us the opportunity to wrote two reviews in the field: [7] and [8].

Inmaculada Ortiz joined the group for a research stay and was in charge of the characterization of the electrodes' performance. Then, the valuable hands of Rocio were crucial for the validation part.

And...as expected...we found some difficulties regarding the two identified challenges: the sampling cell and the validation. How valuable are well-directed brainstorms to solve this cases (swimming in the dark)!!. It is not enough to spend hours and hours working in the lab. Sometimes you need to look at the project with certain perspective and distance, and listen to what everyone in the team has to say.

The result...we have now one device that measures pH, chloride, potassium and sodium in sweat, on-body and in real time. We have presented for the first time reproducibility for on-body measurements for these targets. We have gone through a now well-entrenched protocol that validate the on-body measurements at the laboratory scale. And I am extremely glad to be part of these valuable advancements.

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.analchem.9b02126

(Chech it up, Check it up, Check it up!!!)

I would like to highlight the initiative, the direction and all the time and effort invested by Gaston in this project. Also, all the work by Marc in the laboratory as well as fruitful conversations. And finally, the very good team work and environment.

I am really happy with our Analytical Chemistry paper. Let's celebrate it and continue with this research line towards other analytes, improved prototypes and massive clinical validation.

Maria

© 2019 Maria Cuartero. All rights reserved.
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