Meet the Teams:
TU Eindhoven

A team of TU/e students, fifteen strong, wants to develop an easy-to-use test this year to detect kidney failure in an early stage.[1] They will be creating a biosensor as part of the 2016 SensUs student competition, in which multi-disciplinary student teams of five European universities will all be working toward designing, building, and testing a biosensor prototype.

The sooner kidney failure can be detected, the greater the chance of successful treatment to inhibit the damage. Diabetes, high blood pressure and age come with a higher risk of kidney failure, so the Dutch Kidney Foundation urges people aged sixty and over to have their kidney function checked every year to expose possible kidney damage.

Right now, these checks often involve laboratory tests in hospitals. The easy-to-use test the TU/e students plan on developing should reduce the burden for both patients and caregivers. Patients could do the easy, quick, and cost-effective test at their GP or even at home. It's a biosensor: a device that measures a certain substance, a so-called biomarker, in blood, urine, sweat or saliva, indicating whether someone is sick or not. SensUs 2016 focuses on the measurement of creatinine in blood plasma.

The Eindhoven student team will take on teams from England, Sweden, Belgium, and Denmark on September 9 and 10. The protoypes will then be tested and assessed for aspects such as precision, user-friendliness, and innovation.