Friday, 13 June 2025 11:00am – 12:00pm

This seminar will be delivered in Not booked

Speaker: Chuanzhen Zhao

Host: Markus Muellner

Title: Tissue-like soft bioelectronic devices for continuous biomarker monitoring

Abstract
Biomarkers from the human body can provide dynamic and powerful insight into a broad spectrum of health conditions. Monitoring biomarkers in bodily fluids will improve and advance disease prediction, screening, diagnosis, and treatment. At present, however, the ability to study and track the everchanging mixtures of chemicals inside and on the human body is limited. Soft bioelectronic devices are ideal for interfacing with soft, complex, and actively moving organs for biomarker monitoring.

In this talk, I will focus on our development of transistor biosensors towards in vivo biomarker monitoring, where DNA sequences (aptamers) covalently functionalized to the device surfaces enable specific, high-sensitivity molecular recognition. Building on the capabilities of these aptamer-FET biosensors, we developed multiplexed sensors that simultaneously target several important biomarkers, including dopamine, serotonin, glucose, phenylalanine, and cortisol. We designed and fabricated Si-based implantable neurochemical probes, polyimide-based flexible wearable devices, and bottle-brushed soft polymer probes for ex vivo and in vivo experiments. To seamlessly interface with the human body, we developed tissue-like biosensors using intrinsically stretchable organic field-effect transistors (OFETs). Our group has developed direct photopatterning approaches for each layer in the soft OFETs, including the dielectric, conducting, and semiconducting layers. These OFET biosensors can monitor biomarkers non-invasively from sweat and minimally invasively through interstitial fluids in real time. In addition, I will talk about our recent efforts on direct grafting and photo-patterning of biomolecules on conjugated polymers and their applications in biosensing. The technologies we are developing will advance our understanding of healthy brain function in relation to complex behavior, as well as corresponding dysfunction in psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders.

Bio
Chuanzhen Zhao is an NIH/NIBIB F32 postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University. Dr. Zhao is currently working on developing soft and stretchable physical and chemical biosensors and bioelectronics using organic field-effect transistors and circuits for health monitoring.

Dr. Zhao did his Ph.D. in chemistry with Prof. Paul S. Weiss and Prof. Anne M. Andrews at UCLA. His Ph.D. research focused on developing novel biosensors to monitor chemical signaling in the body, including implantable neuroprobes for neurotransmitter monitoring in the brain and wearable devices for hormone monitoring in sweat.

Dr. Zhao has co-authored over 30 peer-reviewed journal articles, including 11 first and co-first-authored papers in prestigious journals, including Science Advances, Nature Reviews Bioengineering, and ACS Nano. Dr. Zhao was named Forbes 30 Under 30 in science in 2023 in recognition of his work in making biosensors for health monitoring. Additionally, Dr. Zhao has received many awards, including the MRS Gold Graduate Student award, the Dimitris N. Chorafas Foundation award, and the Thomas and Ruth F. Jacobs dissertation award.