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Integrated hydrogel microneedle aptamer sensor for wearable insulin monitoring

Nature Reviews Bioengineering (2025)Cite this article

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Wearable biosensors can continuously monitor disease biomarkers, therapeutic drugs and health-related analytes to provide real-time diagnostic insights. The wearable biosensor Aptalyzer integrates hydrogel microneedles and an electrochemical aptamer-based biosensor to assess biomarkers in the skin interstitial fluid.

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Fig. 1: Aptalyzer building blocks and mechanistic operation.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge support by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), salary award from the Canada Research Chairs Program to L.S. and M.P., the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust and Breakthrough T1D. M.G. is the recipient of a salary stipend from the CaRDM Eq NSERC CREATE program.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Engineering Physics, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

    Mayank Garg, Jonathan L’Heureux-Hache & Leyla Soleymani

  2. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

    Stephen Chupil & Mahla Poudineh

  3. Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

    Stephen Chupil & Mahla Poudineh

  4. Aptec Health, Oakville, Ontario, Canada

    Stephen Chupil, Mahla Poudineh & Leyla Soleymani

  5. Division of Endocrinology, Gerontology and Metabolism, Department of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA

    Rayhan A. Lal

  6. Division of Pediatric Endocrinology, Department of Pediatrics, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA

    Rayhan A. Lal

  7. School of Biomedical Engineering, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

    Leyla Soleymani

  8. Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

    Leyla Soleymani

  9. Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

    Leyla Soleymani

Authors
  1. Mayank Garg
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  2. Stephen Chupil
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  3. Jonathan L’Heureux-Hache
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  4. Rayhan A. Lal
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  5. Mahla Poudineh
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  6. Leyla Soleymani
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Contributions

M.G., S.C., L.S. and M.P. contributed to the planning, writing and editing of the article. R.A.L. and J.LH.-H. contributed to the overall layout and editing of the manuscript and the creation of the figures.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Mahla Poudineh or Leyla Soleymani.

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Competing interests

L.S. and M.P. are co-founders of Aptec Health, a McMaster University and University of Waterloo startup company that is commercializing the Aptalyzer under the following patent: PCT/CA2025/050680.

Additional information

Related links

2.4 million people: https://go.nature.com/4iiIKmh

Class II medical device: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-21/chapter-I/subchapter-H/part-862/subpart-B/section-862.1355

Consensus time in range: https://breakthrought1d.ca/aily-management/time-in-range/

De Novo pathway: https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/premarket-submissions-selecting-and-preparing-correct-submission/de-novo-classification-request

Premarket approval: https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/premarket-submissions-selecting-and-preparing-correct-submission/premarket-approval-pma

US$12.6 billion: https://go.nature.com/4rlA2I0

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Garg, M., Chupil, S., L’Heureux-Hache, J. et al. Integrated hydrogel microneedle aptamer sensor for wearable insulin monitoring. Nat Rev Bioeng (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44222-025-00394-3

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