An ecofriendly AuNPs/semi-amorphous MOF-based sensor for in-situ testosterone monitoring for clinical diagnosis and doping control

Tortolini, Cristina; Barbagallo, Federica; Passeri, Daniele; Marrani, Andrea Giacomo; Isidori, Andrea M.; Gianfrilli, Daniele; Antiochia, Riccarda

doi:10.3389/fsens.2025.1527587

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Sens.

Sec. Biosensors

Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsens.2025.1527587

This article is part of the Research Topic Nanomaterials for Affordable Biomedical Devices, Environmental and Energy Applications View all articles

An ecofriendly AuNPs/semi-amorphous MOF-based sensor for in-situ testosterone monitoring for clinical diagnosis and doping control

Provisionally accepted

Cristina Tortolini ¹

Federica Barbagallo ²

Daniele Passeri ¹

Andrea Giacomo Marrani ¹

Andrea M. Isidori ¹

Daniele Gianfrilli ¹

Riccarda Antiochia ^1*

¹ Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy
² Kore University of Enna, Enna, Sicily, Italy

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

A novel ecofriendly electrochemical sensor for in-situ detection of testosterone based on gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) and a semi-amorphous metal organic framework (MOF) has been developed for clinical diagnosis and doping control. For this purpose, MIL-100(Fe) has been synthetized according to a green path with crystallization times tuned in the range 2-24 hours. The sensor platform was constructed via drop-casting MOF and AuNPs onto a graphene (GPH) screen-printed electrode (SPE) surface. The surface structure and morphology and the electrochemical properties of unmodified and modified electrodes were investigated by (SEM), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy analysis (EDX), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Raman spectroscopy, cyclic voltammetry (CV) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), demonstrating the enhanced electrochemical response of the platform modified with MOF obtained with the shorter crystallization time of 2 hours (MOF2h) and AuNPs, compared to unmodified electrode. The AuNPs/MOF2h/GPH/SPE based sensor was responsive to nanomolar concentrations of testosterone, showing a wide linear range from 1 to 50 nM and a detection limit (LOD) of 0.5 nM, which correlates to the serum concentration values of healthy males. The combination of these results with the excellent performance maintained by the proposed sensor when interfaced with a miniaturized potentiostat (Sensit-Smart) directly connected to a smartphone, highlights the potential of this device towards in-situ electrochemical testosterone sensing, in particular for medical diagnosis and for doping control.

Keywords: Metal-Organic Frameworks, gold nanoparticles, electrochemical sensor, Testosterone, clinical diagnosis, doping control

Received: 14 Nov 2024; Accepted: 19 Feb 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Tortolini, Barbagallo, Passeri, Marrani, Isidori, Gianfrilli and Antiochia. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Riccarda Antiochia, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy

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