Cell-based surface acoustic wave resonant microsensor for biomolecular agent detection

This paper describes the development of a novel surface acoustic wave (SAW)-based biosensor system for liquid phase biomolecular agent detection. The functional layer of the biosensor comprises Sf9 insect cells that can be efficiently used for the expression of specific ligand receptors and is coupled to the acousto-electric transducer. We introduce the dual bio-SAW sensor concept where only one side of a device pair is functionalized while the other side serves as a reference: enabling a differential output that obviates common mode variations. The detection of cellular responses to octopamine (an invertebrate neurotransmitter) was used to demonstrate the biosensor system´s efficacy. We believe that this biological sensor system can be used more generally to monitor changes in cell biochemistry and physiology when subjected to different biomolecular agents, e.g. the detection of receptor-specific ligand binding.