Electrochemical Sensors and Biosensors Represent Very Promising Tools in Pharmaceutical Sciences

The explosive development of knowledge, technology and human society has resulted in urgently needs of more sensitive, specific, reliable, efficient, continuous, cost-effective, faster and conveniently analytical methods with miniaturized and portable devices to monitor key parameters. Electrochemical sensors and biosensors have been one of the most attractive areas of research and have found a vast range of pharmaceutical, biomedical, clinical, industrial, environmental and agricultural applications to meet these requirements and offer a better quality of drugs, food, environment, and more general, a better quality of life. Electrochemical sensors hold a leading position among chemical sensors which consist of a signal transducer covered by a recognition element, and can be utilized for fast, simple and direct analysis in an even turbid sample matrix. Furthermore, biochemical molecular recognition properties such as antibody-antigen binding and enzymatic reactions are employed in biosensors for selective analysis. In electrochemical sensors, an electrode is used to transduce a biological or chemical signal into an electrical signal by electroanalytical techniques such as potentiometry, conductometry and amperometry (voltammetry), which are based on potential, conductivity and current measurement, respectively. Up to the 1960s, pH glass electrode as a chemical sensor and the amperometric glucose enzyme electrode as the modern concept of biosensors were the only sensors introduced. However, with the start of the 21st century, the evolution of sophisticated sensing devices has been observed and furthermore, research into electrochemical sensor design is developing in new exciting directions and applications. As a dramatically multidisciplinary field of science from electrochemistry, biochemistry, biophysics, cell biology, molecular biology, biomedicine, analytical chemistry, biomedical engineering, nanotechnology, biotechnology, and cancer research, future progress would require extensive efforts for fulfilling emerging needs from drug and food analysis to early detection of disease biomarkers. This fascinating field of science is particularly concerned with understanding electrical phenomena in biological systems as can be seen in biological events such as signal transduction, metabolism and energy conversion with in-vivo changes of current or potential. Therefore, electrochemical analysis can reflect the oxidation or reduction (electron transfer) of ions, oligonucleotides and enzymes. These phenomena have been documented by Nobel prizes in medicine in 1936 for the chemical basis prove of neurotransmitter release, in 1963 for the sodium-potassium ion pump model of nerve impulses, in 1970 for mechanisms of humoral transmission in nerve cells, in 1978 for chemiosmosis of the electrochemical membrane gradient that drives ATP synthesis; in 1991 for understanding of the function of single-ion channels; in 1997 in chemistry for discovery of the ion-transporting enzyme Na+, K+-ATPase, and continuing in 2000 in medicine, for signal transduction in the nervous system. Furthermore, the electroanalysis of neurotransmitters in living brain cells is approaching a state of Copyright © 2015 by School of Pharmacy Shaheed Beheshti University of Medical Sciences and Health Services Iranian Journal of Pharmaceutical Research (2015), 14 (3): 663-664