This interview is part of The Analytical Scientist’s feature exploring how analytical technologies are changing the science of sport – from metabolomics, microsampling, and wearables to anti-doping, recovery, muscle growth, and precision medicine.
For Britton Needham, there’s nothing abstract about real-time biomarker monitoring. As a competitive wrestler with type 1 diabetes, he once measured his blood sugar up to 200 times on tournament days, using the results to shape everything from diet to match strategy. Now, as an analytical chemistry PhD student, he is working on a wearable system designed to make that kind of information faster, easier, and more actionable.
Here, Britton and his father Shane Needham – himself an analytical scientist, serial bioanalytical entrepreneur, and bodybuilding competitor – discuss the personal experience that shaped Britton’s interest in continuous monitoring, the analytical challenges involved, and why sport could become an early proving ground for wearable biomarker technologies.
Brtiton, how did managing type 1 diabetes as a competitive wrestler influence your interest in real-time biomarker monitoring?
Britton Needham: I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at the age of nine, so from very early on I had to know where my blood sugar was and how to adjust it throughout the day – especially if I wanted to compete in sport.
I wrestled competitively for about 15 years, from the age of eight or nine through to around 18, 19, or 20. I was a four-time kids’ state champion, an All-American wrestler, and a four-time high school state placer. On tournament days, I would weigh in at six or seven in the morning and then wrestle all the way into the afternoon, usually until four or five. During that time, I might measure my blood sugar 150 to 200 times.
That meant taking small blood draws from each of my fingers again and again. Eventually, my fingers became so calloused that I would have to take the needle out of the lancet and manually prick them. It was not especially enjoyable – but it worked.
Shane Needham: Those first couple of years involved a lot of trial and error. It really was a scientific experiment. We documented what Britton ate, how he trained, how he wrestled, and gradually fine-tuned it.
We found that if he didn’t step on the mat somewhere around 70 to 80 mg/dL, it wasn’t optimal. There were times when his blood sugar was too high and there wasn’t much he could do about it, so he had to score as many points as possible, as quickly as possible, before he started getting really tired in the third period.
That was where we learned how much blood glucose levels could affect performance. Most people don’t think about glucose in that way, but Britton did – and he still does.
Britton Needham: Honestly, it sometimes felt more like a superpower. If my blood sugar was way off, I would step on the mat and think, “Okay, if I don’t win in the first period, I’m going to lose this match.” So I would have to do something big early – and a lot of the time, I was able to pull it off.
Please tell us about your current work
Britton: Academically, I studied chemistry and biology as an undergraduate. Originally, I thought I would try to go to medical school, but around my sophomore or junior year of college I changed my mind. I felt the PhD route was more suited to me and to the way my brain thinks about these problems. Right now, I’m in my third year studying analytical chemistry.
In my PhD program, I build ion mobility spectrometers – making custom modifications depending on what a specific company wants.
Beyond my PhD project, I also started a company earlier this year. We’re developing a wearable device to monitor blood glucose in a much better way than is currently possible. It could potentially monitor lipids, metabolites, and other markers. It is tunable, so to speak. My goal is to have that prototype finished by the end of the year.
Why do athletes need continuous monitoring?
Britton: The problem with the current approach is that you may not hear back on that result for a month. Whenever you are measuring something – even a single metabolite, such as glucose, ketones, or anything else – there is always a trade-off. Do you want the result quickly, or do you want it to be accurate? Right now, there is not really a method on the market that does both at the same time: something quick and accurate enough to make real-time treatment decisions based on the result.
Shane: Even with a clinical lab, you are probably looking at a week. You collect the sample, sometimes you have to go to a clinic, or perhaps you do at-home blood testing, but there is still going to be a turnaround time before you get the result. With a wearable device, athletes could start asking: I’ve got a hard session planned, but am I fatigued – even though I feel OK? Do I need to rest or should I train?
What are the potential biggest benefits of continuous monitoring for athletes?
Britton: I think the biggest impact would be the ability to measure a specific metabolite in real time. In sport, especially competitive sport where you are exhausting yourself, one of the biggest impacts could be measuring how much glycogen your body has available.
When we talk about fatigue – especially when you are really pushing yourself to the limit, whether that is in a marathon, sprinting, wrestling, swimming, or another sport – your body has to use the glycogen stored in your liver. Glycogen is essentially a long chain of glucose molecules stored for when you need energy later. Your body breaks those glucose molecules down as a rapid-acting energy source.
If you had some kind of wearable – whether a watch, a ring, or something else – you could have a real-time idea of what is happening. You might start to feel tired, or perhaps the device could even detect something before you feel tired. If you could see that your glycogen stores were about to drop below a certain level, you could take in quick-acting glucose or something similar.
Shane: A good question is: do we even know which metabolites to monitor? No, I don’t think we do yet. But why do we measure glucose? Now, we measure glucose because we need to. But why did it become a biomarker we measure? Because we can.
My point is that in analytical chemistry, and really throughout history, you do not measure what you cannot measure. Glucose was relatively easy to measure – or at least we have turned it into something easy to measure. Because it is not currently convenient to put a wearable on an athlete and measure certain biomarkers, we are not doing it. But if we had an analytical device that is wearable, real time, and gives feedback on whatever biomarker you are interested in, that becomes data we can correlate and learn from. That may help us identify other metabolites, lipids, sugars, or other markers worth measuring.
Are you able to talk at this stage about the technology underpinning the system?
Britton: At its core, it is a highly specialized, non-invasive optical sensor based on the latest spectroscopic techniques. Every molecule in the body has a distinct signature, and we’ve developed a way to tune our hardware to read those specific signals in real-time. My company's focus right now is glucose for personal reasons, but glucose is really just the starting line. The major breakthrough here is the versatility of the platform. Tracking markers from the lactic acid cycle and lipids, all the way to things like myostatin, can unlock crucial information for performance, recovery, and overall health. The end goal is a single wearable device capable of isolating a whole spectrum of critical metabolic and physiological biomarkers.
Do you see a natural crossover between the sporting applications we’ve been discussing and precision medicine?
Shane: Yes, and that is really interesting. I have been involved in dried blood spot technology, but the issue is that they are still not really real time, and there are also sampling issues from a personal perspective. How does somebody collect the sample? Do they smear the spot? How much blood do they collect? There are all kinds of variables. So, having a device that is tuned to the patient – where the patient does not really have to do anything – could be even better than dried blood spot testing. The data could be sent to a server somewhere, and it would be more real time, more clinical, and more patient-centric.
Are there any other technology approaches you have your eye on that look promising from a monitoring point of view?
Shane: In addition to continuous monitoring, I also think about another model. I remember when you could go into a pharmacy and get your blood pressure tested using a machine. And I think we may eventually see something similar with technologies such as ion mobility spectrometers. Manchester United, for example, might have a spectrometer in the locker room to test players after a match, before a match, maybe even at halftime.
I think we could see those kinds of instruments in pharmacies or walk-in clinics. They could give us a lot of biological data. And, perhaps with AI, that data could even help with diagnosis. That can be scary, but it might say: you have a fever, you need this; your blood pressure is high, you need this; this biomarker is elevated, you need this.
Could sport be an early adopter for some of these technologies?
Britton: I hope so – with athletes, weightlifters, marathon runners, or people in whatever sport using systems like this first. That is what many people are ultimately trying to achieve: being as fit as physically possible. But at least in America – I do not know the exact statistics now – a lot of people are not marathon runners, sprinters, weightlifters, or in good health.
So I hope people who compete in sports adopt it first. I think that could start a little bit of a revolution, where others see it and think, “Wow, that is insane,” and then begin measuring those biomarkers themselves. Ultimately, that could help people become much healthier because they are measuring those biomarkers continuously and in real time.
Shane: It is great advertising when you can put it in athletes’ hands.
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