Diabetes is a very complex, chronic immune disorder that requires extensive medical care with multifactorial risk-reduction strategies beyond glycemic control. In recent years, the prevalence of diabetes, in particular, type 1 diabetes (T1D), has significantly increased from 5% to 10%, and this has in turn has impacted the incidence of associated lethal complications in children and adults. Personalized glucometers allow diabetes management by easy monitoring of the high millimolar blood-glucose concentration levels. However, the importance of non-glucose based diabetes biomarkers has recently gained considerable attention for early prediction and providing insights about the diabetes metabolic pathways and understanding diabetic disorders. Nevertheless, non-glucose markers of diabetes are present at much lower concentrations (picomolar to femtomolar) than the glucose levels in blood. High abundances of interfering components such as cell lysates and serum proteins (matrix effect) in clinical matrices affect reliable detection and sensitivity. Hence, detection of biomarker levels in complex clinical matrices compared to simple buffer solutions poses a considerable challenge in assay development and validation. Herein we present results from our surface plasmon resonance immunoarrays for measurements of ultra-low levels of non-glucose based diabetes markers present in serum and whole blood.

Acknowledgements: This work was supported by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases of the National Institutes of Health.