Biosensorsymposium '87

The need for new measurement and analysis techniques in clinical analytical chemistry, environmental monitoring and process control is clearly increasing.Biosensor techniques are quite new methods in analytical and clinical chemistry.Although they are promising techniques, there still exist many problems.Long reaction times, thermal and chemical instability are most serious.Biosensor research started in Finland in 1984.In 1986 began a three years research programme, which is financiated by Technology Development Centre of Finland (TEKES) and six Finnish firms (Farmos, Labsystems, Medix, Neste, Orion, Vaisala).The main goals of this research programme are to establish a research group and a laboratory and to increase the knowhow in this field.The biosensor research is concentrated to the Medical Engineering Laboratory of VTT, which took care of symposium arrangements.In this first biosensor symposium, which was held in Tampere, lecturers described the "state of the art" of biosensor research.Immobilization of biomolecules on the sensor surface is one of the most critical things when developing a biosensor. Immobilization methods and the possibilities of protein engineering to modify biomolecules are discussed.Optical, acoustic and electrochemical detection methods was described in details and the main features of conducting polymers were reviewed.