Micro-needle implantable electrochemical oxygen sensor: ex-vivo and in-vivo studies

Oxygen is vital for energy metabolism in mammals and the variability of the concentration is considered a clinical alert for a wide range of metabolic malfunctions in medicine. In this article, we describe the development and application of a micro-needle implantable platinum-based electrochemical sensor for measuring partial pressure of oxygen in intramuscular tissue (in-vivo) and vascular blood (ex-vivo). The Pt-Nafion® sensor was characterized morphological and electrochemically showing a higher sensitivity of −2.496 nA/mmHg (−1.495 nA/μM) when comparing with its bare counterpart. Our sensor was able to discriminate states with different oxygen partial pressures (pO2) for ex-vivo (blood) following the same trend of the commercial gas analyzer used as standard. For in-vivo (intramuscular) experiments, since there is not a gold standard for measuring pO2 in tissue, it was not possible to correlate the obtained currents with the pO2 in tissue. However, our sensor was able to detect clear statistical differences of O2 between hyperoxia and hypoxia states in tissue. •An implantable sensor was developed for being insertion with needle in muscular tissue.•The miniaturised electrochemical sensor was elaborated to monitor ischemia in tissue.•Tissue ischemia was detected by measuring Oxygen.•An amperometric Oxygen Nafion-based sensor was optimised in vitro.•The developed sensor was pre-clinically validated in vivo in rabbit models.