September 2010 – Lab on a Chip Blog

Archive for September, 2010

Top ten most accessed articles in August

28 Sep 2010

This month sees the following articles in Lab on a Chip that are in the top ten most accessed:-

Cell lysis and DNA extraction of gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria from whole blood in a disposable microfluidic chip
Madhumita Mahalanabis, Hussam Al-Muayad, M. Dominika Kulinski, Dave Altman and Catherine M. Klapperich
Lab Chip, 2009, 9, 2811 – 2817, DOI: 10.1039/b905065p

Programmable diagnostic devices made from paper and tape
Andres W. Martinez, Scott T. Phillips, Zhihong Nie, Chao-Min Cheng, Emanuel Carrilho, Benjamin J. Wiley and George M. Whitesides
Lab Chip, 2010, 10, 2499 – 2504, DOI: 10.1039/c0lc00021c

Microfluidics without pumps: reinventing the T-sensor and H-filter in paper networks
Jennifer L. Osborn, Barry Lutz, Elain Fu, Peter Kauffman, Dean Y. Stevens and Paul Yager
Lab Chip, 2010, DOI: 10.1039/c004821f

Lab-on-a-chip devices as an emerging platform for stem cell biology
Kshitiz Gupta, Deok-Ho Kim, David Ellison, Christopher Smith, Arnab Kundu, Jessica Tuan, Kahp-Yang Suh and Andre Levchenko
Lab Chip, 2010, 10, 2019 – 2031, DOI: 10.1039/c004689b, Tutorial Review

Massively parallel detection of gene expression in single cells using subnanolitre wells
Yuan Gong, Adebola O. Ogunniyi and J. Christopher Love
Lab Chip, 2010, 10, 2334 – 2337, DOI: 10.1039/c004847j, Communication

Dynamics of microfluidic droplets
Charles N. Baroud, Francois Gallaire and Rémi Dangla
Lab Chip, 2010, 10, 2032 – 2045, DOI: 10.1039/c001191f, Critical Review

Precompetitive preclinical ADME/Tox data: set it free on the web to facilitate computational model building and assist drug development
Sean Ekins and Antony J. Williams
Lab Chip, 2010, 10, 13 – 22, DOI: 10.1039/b917760b, Perspective

Electrochemical sensing in paper-based microfluidic devices
Zhihong Nie, Christian A. Nijhuis, Jinlong Gong, Xin Chen, Alexander Kumachev, Andres W. Martinez, Max Narovlyansky and George M. Whitesides
Lab Chip, 2010, 10, 477 – 483, DOI: 10.1039/b917150a

Vortex-assisted DNA delivery
Jun Wang, Yihong Zhan, Victor M. Ugaz and Chang Lu
Lab Chip, 2010, 10, 2057 – 2061, DOI: 10.1039/c004472e

Shrink film patterning by craft cutter: complete plastic chips with high resolution/high-aspect ratio channel
Douglas Taylor, David Dyer, Valerie Lew and Michelle Khine
Lab Chip, 2010, 10, 2472 – 2475, DOI: 10.1039/c004737f, Technical Note

Why not take a look at the articles today and blog your thoughts and comments below.

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Point-of-Care Microfluidic Diagnosis in 15 min

23 Sep 2010

Claros Diagnostics has received regulatory approval from the EU for a new microfluidic point-of-care instrument that measures PSA levels from a finger prick within 15 minutes allowing monitoring of prostrate cancer patients.

The business end of the machine is a $1 credit card sized, injection moulded, microfluidic cartridge that accepts a small drop of blood and is then inserted into a special reader. Captured proteins are tagged with gold nanoparticles and then developed in a silver solution to form silver plated particles which are easily read by a photodetector. PSA levels are then reported within about 15 minutes of sample input with an accuracy similar to laboratory tests.

Microfluidics allows the delivery of rapid results indicate Claros Diagnostics, who aim to make point-of-care PSA monitoring in the doctor’s office a reality. The device recently received EU Regulatory approval and is seeking approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. “Although microfluidics has been a field of scientific endeavour for over 20 years we have not seen full commercialisation of this technology outside the research setting” said Harp Minhas (Editor of the leading journal on micro- and nanofluidics, Lab on a Chip). “However, I have seen evidence that in the next two to three years there are likely to be a flurry of similar point-of-use products that will aim to capture related or overlapping markets.”

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Shining light on sperm viability

21 Sep 2010

Optoelectronic tweezers are able to distinguish between live and dead sperm cells, even if they aren’t moving, say US scientists.

An important part of in vitro fertilisation (IVF) techniques is selecting and injecting an individual sperm cell into an egg. The quality of the chosen sperm is critical to the success of the procedure and is currently assessed by an operator looking at sperm movement under a microscope. However, sperm that don’t move are not necessarily dead, and it is nearly impossible to assess their viability visually.

To combat this problem, Aaron Ohta at the University of Hawaii and his team have demonstrated that optoelectronic tweezers – which use a combination of light and electric fields to control microscopic objects – can distinguish and sort between live and dead cells, irrespective of mobility.

Read the full story here

Link to journal article
Motile and non-motile sperm diagnostic manipulation using optoelectronic tweezers
Aaron T. Ohta, Maurice Garcia, Justin K. Valley, Lia Banie, Hsan-Yin Hsu, Arash Jamshidi, Steven L. Neale, Tom Lue and Ming C. Wu, Lab Chip, 2010, DOI: 10.1039/c0lc00072h

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Micropatch detects disease biomarkers in skin

14 Sep 2010

Scientists in Australia have built a microneedle device capable of detecting disease-specific proteins directly from the skin.

Normally when a clinical sample such as blood is needed to screen a patient for disease, it has to be taken by a specially trained healthcare practitioner using a needle and syringe. The sample is then clotted, centrifuged and stored under controlled conditions ready for analysis.

Now Mark Kendall and his colleagues from the University of Queensland, Australia have found an alternative pain-free method which dispenses with invasive needles, specialist training and sample processing. Kendall incorporated a small chip coated with sharp, densely packed microneedles into a patch that can be applied to the skin. The sharp gold-coated silicon needles are less than 1 mm in length and are able to capture and sample protein antibodies directly from the skin.

Read the full story here.

Link to journal article
Surface-modified microprojection arrays for intradermal biomarker capture, with low non-specific protein binding
Simon R. Corrie, Germain J. P. Fernando, Michael L. Crichton, Marion E. G. Brunck, Chris D. Anderson and Mark A. F. Kendall, Lab Chip, 2010
DOI: 10.1039/c0lc00068j

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Focus on Korean Microfluidics 2009

03 Sep 2010

Scientists in Korea have played a major role in developing lab-on-a-chip applications in chemistry, biology and medicine.

This is exemplified by the high quality papers published by Korean authors in Lab on a Chip in 2009

View the list of papers

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Lab on a Chip Blog

Archive for September, 2010

Top ten most accessed articles in August

Point-of-Care Microfluidic Diagnosis in 15 min

Shining light on sperm viability

Micropatch detects disease biomarkers in skin

Focus on Korean Microfluidics 2009

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