Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a chronic relapsing autoimmune disease with rising incidence worldwide. There is an increasing desire for non-invasive diagnostic tools to enable simple and sensitive IBD monitoring. Here, we report an orally administered nanosensor which will dissociate into ultrasmall platinum nanoclusters (PtNCs) in IBD-related inflammatory microenvironments. By exploiting the enzyme-mimicking activity of PtNCs and the precise bandpass filterability of kidney, the released-PtNCs can be detected in a scalable urinary readout, such as fluorescence and volumetric bar-chart chip (V-Chip), for point-of-care (POC) analysis. Our results demonstrate that the nanosensors exhibit significant signal differences between IBD-model mice and healthy mice, which is more sensitive than clinical ELISA assay based on fecal calprotectin. Such a non-invasive diagnostic modality significantly assists in the personalized assessment of pharmacological and follow-up efficacy. We envision that this modular conception will promote the rapid diagnosis of diverse diseases by changing specific responsive components.
Keywords: IBD monitoring; microfluidic chip; orally administered nanosensor; point of care testing; synthetic biomarker.