4 Ways Protein Monitoring Could Change the Way We Stay Healthy

Inside our bodies, proteins are constantly in motion - helping us fight infections, repair tissue, and regulate countless other processes. When something's wrong, they often signal problems before we feel symptoms. But unless we're actively sick or being tested, we don't usually track what our proteins are doing.

Continuous protein monitoring could change that. A new perspective paper in Science, co-authored by Shana Kelley, president of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Chicago, explores how continuous protein monitoring - using tiny sensors that track signals from inside the body - could help us stay ahead of disease. The goal: shift from reactive care to something more proactive, personal and precise.

This work is part of our broader scientific grand challenge to create new tools for sensing and directly measuring inflammation - estimated to play a major role in 50% of all deaths - within tissues in real time.

Here are four ways continuous protein monitoring could change how we stay healthy.

1. Catch Signs of Disease Earlier - Sometimes Before Symptoms Appear

"Our bodies are not very good at telling us what's going on before disease is really advanced," says Kelley. By the time we feel sick enough to see a doctor, the underlying biological processes may have been at work for weeks, months or even years.

Consider cardiovascular diseases, which often go undetected until significant tissue damage has already occurred. By the time symptoms appear, treatment options become much more limited.

This is the challenge that continuous protein monitoring could help solve.

"Advanced disease is really hard to treat. You can manage it, but it's difficult to turn around," Kelley explains. "If we can get in there early with the earliest warning signs of disease, we're able to apply interventions and make them much more effective."

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in the United States. Monitoring proteins that signal heart damage or stress could enable faster treatment, better medication adherence and improved patient outcomes.

2. Help People Manage High-Burden Diseases With More Precision

Continuous glucose monitoring revolutionized diabetes care by letting patients and doctors see blood sugar changes in real time and adjust treatment accordingly. The same approach applied to inflammatory proteins could transform care for autoimmune diseases like lupus or inflammatory bowel disease, and other chronic diseases, including those affecting cardiovascular health. Early detection of inflammatory flares could prevent irreparable damage and enable safer, more targeted treatments.

"If we were able to watch proteins in real time, we would be able to get at many other disease states - cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, different types of neurodegenerative disease," Kelley says. "It really opens up applications of medicine that we can use sensors for."

3. Spot Inflammation in Action Thanks to Breakthrough Technology

Continuous protein monitoring represents the latest breakthrough in biosensor technology, building on decades of advances in monitoring heart rate, small molecules like glucose, and other biological signals.

Until recently, continuous protein monitoring seemed impossible. Most monitoring technology was designed for small molecules like glucose, not complex proteins. Protein sensors would stick too tightly to their target for hours, making them unable to detect real-time fluctuations - especially when protein levels dropped. Previous sensors required manual intervention to reset them, making continuous monitoring impractical for implanted devices.

That's where Kelley's team made a breakthrough with "active reset" technology - an innovative way to automatically regenerate the sensors.

"You have to be able to reset them to be responsive to changes in concentration going up and going down," Kelley explains. "Being able to do a reset allows us to bring the sensor back to baseline and use it again without doing anything to it, which is very helpful because these sensors would be implanted within the body."

Active reset is just one piece of the puzzle. Combined with biocompatible materials, wireless technology, and the ability to monitor through sweat, blood or tissue fluid, this means we may finally be able to look at our bodies and track our health, as Kelley says, "at the biochemical level."

Dive deeper: First-of-its-Kind Sensor Tracks Inflammation Continuously, in Real Time

4. Support Personalized, Preventive Care, and a More Proactive Health System

Imagine if you could check your inflammation levels the same way you check your heart rate or step count on a smartwatch. Continuous protein monitoring could put that kind of real-time health data directly into patients' and doctors' hands, enabling truly personalized, preventive care. And it could reshape how we conduct medical research, design clinical trials, and approach public health.

For example, remote biomarker tracking during a clinical trial could enhance participant diversity, trial efficiency and data collection.

Real-time data could also drive better research insights, especially for poorly understood diseases where traditional snapshots of health miss critical patterns.

"I think it's really exciting to think about a future where we're not diagnosing disease when it's so late and it's so advanced," says the Chicago Biohub president. "Instead, we're monitoring health, we're managing health, and we're doing interventions to keep people in a state of health rather than to try to treat them when they're sick."

What Happens Next

Realizing a data-driven approach to staying healthy with continuous protein monitoring requires several key steps to happen next. Researchers will need to establish exactly when protein changes signal the need for medical intervention. New AI tools will need to be developed to help doctors interpret the massive amounts of biological data these sensors will generate. And robust privacy protections will need to be built to keep patient data secure while enabling beneficial insights.

Still, the foundational breakthrough means we're a step closer to a healthcare system focused on keeping people healthy rather than simply treating disease.

Learn more about how the Chicago Biohub is developing the technology that could transform how we monitor and manage our health.

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