Terahertz meta-biosensor for subtype detection and chemotherapy monitoring of glioma cells

Rapid and precise identification of glioma subtypes can assist surgeons in quickly determining patients’ conditions and developing treatment plans. However, current methods face challenges such as high cost and limited sensitivity, thereby significantly hindering diagnostic efficiency. In this paper, we proposed a spectral sensing strategy by introducing terahertz biosensors for glioma subtype recognition and therapeutic efficacy monitoring. Our findings demonstrated that both the resonance frequency and amplitude of the transmission spectra varied as the cell increased. The two-dimensional fingerprint diagram could help us rapidly recognize cell subtypes. Additionally, we conducted a theoretical analysis of the sensing performance. We confirmed that the high Q -factor (∼27.8) results from toroidal dipole resonance and examined the impact of dielectric loss and the refractive index of the analyte on the resonance dip. Furthermore, we applied the biosensor in therapeutic drug screening and showed that as the concentration of tubastatin A increased, the resonance frequency shifted from 183.1 GHz to 76.2 GHz. This result indicates that the toroidal dipole constructed by the metasurface enables ultrasensitive light-matter interactions that amplify subtle cellular changes to the resonance spectrum. The proposed THz meta-biosensor demonstrates significant potential for rapid intraoperative recognition of glioma cell subtypes and therapeutic efficacy monitoring.