Symposium on Levodopa Dynamics in Parkinson’s Disease

About the Symposium

Patients may experience very different responses to the same dose of levodopa, even under similar conditions. While this variability is well recognized, the underlying dynamics of the drug in the body remain largely invisible in clinical practice. This symposium starts from a fundamental challenge: we lack the insight into levodopa dynamics needed to fully understand and manage treatment response.

Rather than presenting a finished solution, the symposium defines a critical missing piece in Parkinson's care - the ability to observe and understand levodopa dynamics in real time, as a foundation for more informed and individualized treatment.

The Format

The programme follows the journey of levodopa insight through four complementary perspectives, moving from lived experience to the technologies that could transform it:

• The Patient - Living with uncertainty: how unpredictable treatment effects shape daily life, and what patients need most - stability, predictability, and a better understanding of their own response.
• The Neurologist - Clinical decision-making without direct insight: how treatment is currently managed through observed symptoms rather than drug levels, and the limits of the trial-and-error paradigm.
• Making the Invisible Visible - The biosensing technologies enabling continuous, real-time levodopa monitoring, and the engineering challenges of selectivity, biofouling, calibration, and stability.
• From Monitoring to Treatment - What is required to turn measurements into usable clinical systems, and the path toward more responsive, data-informed treatment.

The programme also includes a break with a research posters market, where researchers from the biosensing field present their work. It is a good opportunity to network with other attendees over refreshments.

Speakers

We are honoured to welcome an international line-up of leading clinicians and researchers:

• Dr. Bo Liang - Zhejiang University, China
• Dr. David Probst - University of North Carolina, USA
• Dr. Irene Litvan - University of California, San Diego, USA
• Dr. Joseph Wang - University of California, San Diego, USA
• Dr. Saman Vinke - Radboud University Medical Center, The Netherlands
• Erik Jan Marinissen - Scientific Director at imec, Leuven, Belgium

Location & Format

The symposium takes place on Tuesday, 25 August 2026 in a hybrid format - join us on-site at TU Eindhoven or virtually from anywhere in the world. To welcome our global audience, the live programme spans three time zones:

• 15:30 - 18:00 CEST (UTC+2) - Eindhoven
• 06:30 - 09:00 PDT (UTC-7)
• 21:30 - 00:00 CST (UTC+8)

The symposium is organised by SensUs, the annual international student competition on biosensors for health, and takes place alongside the SensUs 2026 competition finals, where international student teams present their biosensors for continuous levodopa monitoring, followed by a partner market and the awards ceremony. Participation in the symposium is free of charge.