Toward aptamer-enabled continuous health monitoring: challenges and opportunities

Continuous health monitoring has the potential to transform disease management by moving biomarker measurements from episodic testing to real-time tracking. Aptamers are promising affinity reagents for this purpose because they can recognize a wide range of targets and can be chemically synthesized, engineered, and integrated with miniaturized sensing platforms. In this Perspective, we discuss the key challenges and opportunities for aptamer-enabled continuous health monitoring. We highlighted the need for sensor-ready aptamers that are validated in relevant biofluids, operate within clinically relevant concentration ranges, and maintain specificity in complex matrices. We also discuss challenges in signal transduction, surface immobilization, binding kinetics, regeneration, long-term stability, biofouling, nonspecific binding, and translation. We argue that future progress will require moving beyond aptamers that simply bind targets toward aptamers that function reliably in real sensor formats. Addressing these challenges will help aptamer-based sensors move from proof-of-concept demonstrations toward practical tools for continuous, real-time health monitoring.