Optical Biosensor Technology for the Future of Medical Diagnostics and Therapy

Dear Colleagues,

An early diagnosis of diseases has demonstrated to improve the life expectancy and quality of patients, which is especially relevant for those diseases where prevention and continuous screening is currently not accessible due to a lack of efficient and cost-effective diagnostic technology.

Adequate sensitivity, reliability and accuracy together with a high throughput are fundamental requirements for the next generation of biomedical devices and immunosensors. Nanotechnologies have remarkably improved sensing performance. Moreover, their ease of integration in portable and compact systems is facilitating their translation in clinical settings, as confirmed by an evident increase in nanotechnology-based platforms in pre-clinical and clinical studies during the last decade.

Within this context, optical biosensors are emerging as a powerful tool, due to their high sensitivity and specificity, real-time operation, and ease of use and integration with electronic circuitry for readout systems, minimizing the need for expert users and expensive and bulk equipment. Remarkable advances have already been achieved with optical sensors within medical practice, but there is still ample space for improvement of the design, fabrication and detection methods, from the early validation in the lab toward their clinical application.

This Special Issue will focus on the latest advances in optical devices and systems targeted at medical applications to improve the early detection of diseases, accuracy in diagnoses and efficiency in therapies and drug development. Both review articles and research papers are solicited, covering the following areas:

• Novel optical devices and systems to improve the sensitivity, accuracy and throughput of medical diagnostics and therapeutics;
• Advances in design, fabrication, characterization and data processing methods for the development of the next generation of optical biosensors;
• Use of optical methods and techniques to overcome the limitations of the current systems used in the clinical environment, facilitating their use by non-expert users with high-access and cost-efficient solutions.

Dr. Donato Conteduca
Dr. Isabel Barth
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Biosensors is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• optical biosensors
• nanophotonics
• biomedical photonics
• integrated biosensors
• personalized medicine
• medical diagnostics
• point-of-care devices