Utilizing Macrophage-Embedded Fibrin Gels and Continuous Glucose Monitoring to Characterize Macrophage Glucose Consumption

Continuous glucose monitoring via implantable glucose sensors has been considered for precise and timely measurement of the blood sugar level for diabetes regulation. The foreign body response (FBR) from the tissue to implanted objects at the insult site poses challenges in maintaining the analytical performances of sensors by either blocking or consuming local glucose around the site of implantation. Macrophages are essential immune cells and regulators in the FBR and can consume enough glucose, depending on polarization states, to interfere with glucose measurements. To provide an approach to further understand macrophages’ role and impact in FBR, a glucose consumption sensing platform composed of an in-house fabricated implantable glucose sensor and cell-embedded fibrin gels was used to provide a current signal decay that was related to the glucose concentration change in the gels. Though sensor sensitivity and dynamic ranges were acceptable, yet results from obtained macrophage-embedded gels were not significantly different among different cellular conditions. These findings were likely caused by protein-sensor interaction in the gels and potential in both gel preparation and operation on cells. Such results reveal some shortcomings of the applied platform and express the necessity in refining the platform design and in regulating the interaction between the sensor surface and substances from gels and from other parts of the sensing platform to achieve the full potential in quantification that was proposed for such design.Bachelor of Scienc