Author Archive

2014 Pioneers of Miniaturisation Lectureship Winner

Dr. Sangeeta N. Bhatia is winner of  the 2014 Corning Inc./Lab on a Chip Pioneers of Miniaturisation Lectureship

The 9th ‘Pioneers of Ministurisation‘ Lectureship, is for extraordinary or outstanding contributions to the understanding or development of miniaturised systems and will be presented to Dr Bhatia at the µTAS 2014 Conference in San Antonio, Texas in October. Dr Bhatia will receive a certificate, $5000 and will give a short lecture at the µTAS Conference, later this year.

About the winner

Dr Bhatia conducts research at the intersection of engineering, medicine, and biology to develop novel platforms for understanding, diagnosing, and treating human disease. Her ‘tiny technologies’ interface living cells with synthetic systems, enabling new applications in tissue regeneration, stem cell differentiation, medical diagnostics and drug delivery. She and her colleagues were the first to demonstrate that microfabrication technologies used in semiconductor manufacturing could be used to organize cells of different types to produce a tissue with emergent properties. Dr. Bhatia’s findings have produced high-throughput-capable human microlivers, which model human drug metabolism, drug-induced liver disease, and interaction with human pathogens. Her group also develops nanoparticles and nanoporous materials that can be designed to assemble and communicate to diagnose and treat a variety of diseases, including cancer.

Dr. Bhatia co-authored the first undergraduate textbook on tissue engineering and has published more than 150 manuscripts, that have been cited over 13,500 times. She and her 150+ trainees have contributed to more than 40 issued or pending patents and launched 9 biotechnology companies with close to 100 products. She is a frequent advisor to governmental organizations and consults widely for academia and industry.

Dr. Bhatia holds a B.S. from Brown University; an M.S. in mechanical engineering from MIT; a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from MIT; and an M.D. from Harvard Medical School and currently she directs the Laboratory for Multiscale Regenerative Technologies at MIT. She is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and the John J. and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. She is a member of the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science and the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, a senior member of the Broad Institute, and a biomedical engineer at Brigham & Women’s Hospital. Dr. Bhatia is an elected Fellow of the Massachusetts Academy of Sciences, Biomedical Engineering Society, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and the American Society for Clinical Investigation.

We would like to congratulate Dr Bhatia on this achievement!

The 2013 Pioneers of Miniaturisation Lectureship was awarded to Shuichi Takayama, University of Michigan.

See here for further information, including past winners.

Digg This
Reddit This
Stumble Now!
Share on Facebook
Bookmark this on Delicious
Share on LinkedIn
Bookmark this on Technorati
Post on Twitter
Google Buzz (aka. Google Reader)

2013 Pioneers of Miniaturisation Lecture

The 2013 Pioneers of Miniaturisation Prize went to Shuichi Takayama!

Lab on a Chip joined forces with Corning Incorporated to award the eighth Pioneers of Miniaturisation Lectureship, including a certificate of recognition and a prize of $5000.

The lectureship was presented at the µTAS 2013 Conference in Freiburg, Germany. The Pioneers of Miniaturisation Lectureship recognises outstanding achievements and significant contributions to the understanding and advancement of micro- and nano-scale science. This year, the Lectureship was awarded to Professor Schuichi Takayama at the University of Michigan, USA.

Shu has made seminal contributions and provided true vision in advancing scientific developments and technologies that have increased our understanding of phenomena at the micro- and nano scale. Not only was he the first to report an organ on a chip, in his pioneering paper (PNAS 2007), but he has also developed bone-on-a-chip and stem cell-on-a-chip as well as establishing various organ-on-a-chip platforms. Amnosgt his many achievements, Shu has improved handling of sperm, eggs an embryos during the in vitro fertilization processes by designing integrated microfluidic systems.

Shu has published several papers in Lab on a Chip – click on the links to download his 2014 papers:

Elevating Sampling
Joseph M. Labuz and Shuichi Takayama
DOI: 10.1039/C4LC00125G, Frontier
From themed collection Lab on a Chip: Insights Issue

Defined topologically-complex protein matrices to manipulate cell shape via three-dimensional fiber-like patterns
Christopher Moraes, Byoung Choul Kim, Xiaoyue Zhu, Kristen L. Mills, Angela R. Dixon, M. D. Thouless and Shuichi Takayama
DOI: 10.1039/C4LC00122B, Paper
From themed collection Open access articles from Lab on a Chip

Control of soft machines using actuators operated by a Braille display
Bobak Mosadegh, Aaron D. Mazzeo, Robert F. Shepherd, Stephen A. Morin, Unmukt Gupta, Idin Zhalehdoust Sani, David Lai, Shuichi Takayama and George M. Whitesides
DOI: 10.1039/C3LC51083B, Paper

Digg This
Reddit This
Stumble Now!
Share on Facebook
Bookmark this on Delicious
Share on LinkedIn
Bookmark this on Technorati
Post on Twitter
Google Buzz (aka. Google Reader)

Increase in Lab on a Chip Impact Factor

Lab on a Chip Issue 17

We are delighted to announce that our 2013 Impact Factor* has risen to 5.748!

Lab on  a Chip provides a unique forum for the publication of significant and original work related to miniaturisation (on or off chips) at the micro- and nano- scale across a variety of disciplines. We would like to thank all of our Board members, authors, readers and reviewers for their continued support.

Contribute to our next Impact Factor –  submit your latest piece of high impact work with us here.

Interested in other Royal Society of Chemistry journals? Click here to see how well they did.

*The Impact Factor provides an indication of the average number of citations per paper. Produced annually, Impact Factors are calculated by dividing the number of citations in a year by the number of citeable articles published in the preceding two years. Data based on 2013 Journal Citation Reports®, (Thomson Reuters, 2014).

Digg This
Reddit This
Stumble Now!
Share on Facebook
Bookmark this on Delicious
Share on LinkedIn
Bookmark this on Technorati
Post on Twitter
Google Buzz (aka. Google Reader)

Lab-in-a-Briefcase

In a recent paper in Lab on a Chip, a group of British researchers reported a ‘lab-in-a-briefcase’ for detection and quantification of the prostate cancer biomarker PSA in human serum and whole blood. Their lab-in-a-briefcase is a small container with a set of coated plastic capillaries, a pre-loaded microwell plate with reagents and a film scanner.

lab-in-a-briefcase

The researchers stress that their system is cheap and easy to handle, which would make it very useful for performing diagnostics in low resource areas. In addition, their lab-in-a-briefcase demonstrates the potential for point-of-care tests for prostate cancer, which would allow easy screening by non-experts in a non-clinical setting.

The concept of a lab-in-a-briefcase may have more far-reaching implications, though. Most lab-on-a-chip assays and microfluidic systems are usually developed in the context of interdisciplinary research collaborations. One research department may develop a new system, while another department has the – often unstable – samples that are used to demonstrate proof-of-concept. This complexity means that projects can quickly become logistic nightmares.

Multi-site collaborations make the portability and the standardized format that are found in the lab-in-a-briefcase and related technologies very important. It doesn’t matter if the application domain of a project is physics, biochemistry or biology. Developing a portable, standardized set-up with good documentation, automated analysis and easy read-out can contribute greatly to the success of a multi-disciplinary microfluidic engineering project, because it promotes collaboration and a wider application of the technology early on.

All of this means that the lab-in-a-briefcase is not just a niche product that is only useful for cheap point-of-care diagnostics in low resource areas. It is a design concept that anyone in the realm of microfluidic engineering needs to understand. Perhaps the concept is also applicable to the project you’re currently working on?

Go check it out for yourselves – you can download this paper fro free* for a limited time only!

Ana I. Barbosa, Ana P. Castanheira, Alexander D. Edwards and Nuno M. Reis
DOI: 10.1039/C4LC00464G, Paper

*Access is free through a registered RSC account until 29th August 2014 – click here to register

Digg This
Reddit This
Stumble Now!
Share on Facebook
Bookmark this on Delicious
Share on LinkedIn
Bookmark this on Technorati
Post on Twitter
Google Buzz (aka. Google Reader)

Life in the Fast Lane

Microscale Inertial Flow Regimes

The Reynolds number, ratio of inertial to viscous forces, is low for most microfluidic platforms and has been approximated to zero to model most microscale fluid flows as linear and time-reversible (Stoke’s flow). Yet Dino Di Carlo’s group at the University of California- Los Angeles, among others, have shown that microfluidic systems in which Reynolds’ number ranges from 1 to 100 exhibit non-negligible inertial effects. These forces lead to separation and ordering of particles within channels by stream line crossing due to effects from the channel geometries (lift forces from the channel wall and velocity profile shear gradient). Inertial lift forces are regulated by the channel dimensions and geometry, particle diameter, and flow rate.[1]

Experimentally-derived intuitions have guided researchers to use the effects of inertial lift forces to produce high throughput flow cytometers to isolate bacteria from diluted blood samples,[2] systems capable of probing the deformability of cells to evaluate metastatic potential[3, 4] and platforms combined with Dean flow in curved channels to increase mixing of fluids or spirals to improve separation of particles.[5] Yet the physical underpinnings guiding these channel designs have been limited.

In this review, Amini and colleagues tackle many of the relationships which are important to create new devices by taking advantage of the unique contribution of inertial forces at the microscale. The behavior of non-Newtonian fluids (i.e., whole blood), the role of particle shape on focusing, particle-particle interactions, and the effect of protrusions along the channel length on flow (pillars, herringbone structures) are also discussed and can open exciting new applications in medical diagnostics, chemical synthesis, manufacturing of materials, and beyond. Inertial microfluidics platforms are en route to commercialization by Johnson & Johnson to sort rare circulating tumor cells from whole blood at 10 million cells per second (CTC-iChip[6]).

Download the full review for free* for a limited time only!

Inertial microfluidic physics
Hamed Amini, Wonhee Lee and Dino Di Carlo. Lab on a Chip, 2014, 14, 2739-2761.
DOI: 10.1039/C4LC00128A

References:
[1] D. Di Carlo, Lab on a Chip, 2009, 9, 3038-3046.
[2] A. J. Mach and D. Di Carlo, Biotechnol. Bioeng., 2010, 107, 302-311.
[3] J. S. Dudani, et al, Lab on a Chip, 2013, 13, 3728-3734.
[4] S. C. Hur, et al, Lab on a Chip, 2011, 11, 912-920.
[5] J. M. Martel and M. Toner, Scientific Reports, 2013, 3.
[6] E. Ozkumur, et al, Sci. Transl. Med., 2013, 5, 179ra47.

*Access is free through a registered RSC account until 25th August 2014 – click here to register

About the WebWriter

Sasha is a PhD student in bioengineering working with Professor Beth Pruitt’s Microsystems lab at Stanford University. Her research focuses on evaluating relationships between cell geometry, intracellular structure, and force generation (contractility) in heart muscle cells. Outside the lab, Sasha enjoys hiking, kickboxing, and interactive science outreach.

Digg This
Reddit This
Stumble Now!
Share on Facebook
Bookmark this on Delicious
Share on LinkedIn
Bookmark this on Technorati
Post on Twitter
Google Buzz (aka. Google Reader)

200th Issue of Lab on a Chip

We are delighted to announce the publication of our 200th issue of Lab on a Chiphow we have grown!

Launched in 2001, publishing 2 issues with a total of 31 articles that year, LOC is now publishing 24 issues a year. Many of the young researchers that published in the first issue have now become Professors themselves, and many have gone on to become award winners. Read the full editorial by our Editor, Harp Minhas to find out more!

This picture shows how the image of LOC has developed from the original cover to the LOC we are familiar with today.

To celebrate this achievement, we have made all of the HOT articles in the 200th issue of LOC free* to access throughout August. Click on the links below to download.

Ana I. Barbosa, Ana P. Castanheira, Alexander D. Edwards and Nuno M. Reis
Lab Chip, 2014, 14, 2918-2928
DOI: 10.1039/C4LC00464G
Yu-Chih Chen, Yu-Heng Cheng, Hong Sun Kim, Patrick N. Ingram, Jacques E. Nor and Euisik Yoon
Lab Chip, 2014, 14, 2941-2947
DOI: 10.1039/C4LC00391H

Lab on a Chip itself has had an enormous influence on the development of the field, by setting very high scientific standards, by providing a common forum and vocabulary, by highlighting significant results, and by attracting some of the best scientists. The journal, and Harp Minhas as the spirit of the journal, have provided a coherence to Lab-on-a-chip science and technology that have had enormous influence in channeling the direction of the field”

Professor George Whitesides, Chair of Editorial Board, Lab on a Chip

*Access is free through a registered RSC account until 31st August 2014 – click here to register

Digg This
Reddit This
Stumble Now!
Share on Facebook
Bookmark this on Delicious
Share on LinkedIn
Bookmark this on Technorati
Post on Twitter
Google Buzz (aka. Google Reader)

New challenges spawn new innovations

Emerging Investigators

Guest edited by Dino di Carlo, Helene Andersson-Svah and Yanyi Huang, this issue celebrates the best and brightest amongst early career miniaturisation scientists around the world. Their editorial reflects on the past before introducing the upcoming challenges that new generations of investigators are facing. These challenges are demonstrated in the range of topics covered in this issue.

Read the full Emerging Investigator themed collection now – we hope you enjoy the articles

This issue features three HOT articles, which received particularly high scores at peer review. They are free* to access for a limited time only so click on the links below to download the full articles

Wei Liu, Yaqian Li, Siyu Feng, Jia Ning, Jingyu Wang, Maling Gou, Huijun Chen, Feng Xu and Yanan Du
Lab Chip, 2014, 14, 2614-2625
DOI: 10.1039/C4LC00081A
Lab Chip, 2014, 14, 2626-2634
DOI: 10.1039/C4LC00039K
J.-P. Frimat, M. Bronkhorst, B. de Wagenaar, J. G. Bomer, F. van der Heijden, A. van den Berg and L. I. Segerink
Lab Chip, 2014, 14, 2635-2641
DOI: 10.1039/C4LC00050A

*Access is free through a registered RSC account untill 22nd September 2014 – click here to register

Digg This
Reddit This
Stumble Now!
Share on Facebook
Bookmark this on Delicious
Share on LinkedIn
Bookmark this on Technorati
Post on Twitter
Google Buzz (aka. Google Reader)

Themed Issue dedicated to Kahp-Yang Suh

An extraordinarily insightful and productive scientist in the field of nanotechnology, material science and bio-inspired systems, Kahp-Yang Suh has published over 200 articles over his short academic life.

Guest edited by Pilnam Kim, Noo Li Jeon and Ali Khademhosseini, this issue includes seven research papers concerning various areas of lab-on-a-chip, written by friends and colleagues of Khap-Yang and includes contributions on a  range of topics related to Kahp-Yang’s work. These papers demonstrate the directions in which lab-on-a-chip and intelligent manufacturing of biomaterials could contribute to the development of the next generation of healthcare systems.

Click here to read the full collection, celebrating Kahp-Yang’s contribution to microfluidics research.

Digg This
Reddit This
Stumble Now!
Share on Facebook
Bookmark this on Delicious
Share on LinkedIn
Bookmark this on Technorati
Post on Twitter
Google Buzz (aka. Google Reader)

The winning challenge is antibiotics!

Antibiotic Resistance

http://www.longitudeprize.org/

Over the past month, members of the public have been voting for six  challenges to win the Longitude Prize and last week it was announced that antibiotics was the winning category.

The development of antibiotics has been vital to our survival, adding 20 years to each persons life on average – but antimicrobial resistance is threatening to cause antibiotics to become ineffective in the future. Along with the development of new antibiotics, diagnostics are crucial in ensuring that patients receive appropriate treatment; to help us to monitor infection and to conserve the therapies we have by only administrating to those that really need them.

The challenge for Longitude Prize 2014 will be set to create a cheap, accurate, rapid and easy-to-use point of care test kit to identify bacterial infections.

We are working with a number of learned societies to develop community initiatives to bring researchers from different disciplines together to stimulate research in the infections disease area. Supporting the Longitude Prize challenge, we have made the following relevant Lab on a Chip articles free* to access for a limited time, so click on the links below and download them today!

Time Lapse Investigation of Antibiotic Susceptibility using a Microfluidic Linear Gradient 3D Culture Device
Zining Hou,   Yu An,   Karin Hjort,   Klas Hjort,  Linus Sandegren and   Zhigang WU
Lab Chip, 2014, Accepted Manuscript
DOI: 10.1039/C4LC00451E

Antimicrobial susceptibility assays in paper-based portable culture devices
Frédérique Deiss, Maribel E. Funes-Huacca, Jasmin Bal, Katrina F. Tjhung and   Ratmir Derda

Lab Chip, 2014,14, 167-171
DOI: 10.1039/C3LC50887K


* Access is free through a registered RSC account – click here to register
Digg This
Reddit This
Stumble Now!
Share on Facebook
Bookmark this on Delicious
Share on LinkedIn
Bookmark this on Technorati
Post on Twitter
Google Buzz (aka. Google Reader)

Microfluidic Applications

Lab on a Chip Industry Workshop

Microfluidic Applications

Join our event on Facebook and find out who else is attending!

August 2-3 2014 in Dalian, China

This workshop focuses on the innovative developments in Lab-on-a-Chip technology and the applications of microfluidics in diagnostics, biological, material, pharmaceutical, and environmental sciences. For more information, please visit the official webpage.

Register now – deadline is July 15th 2014

Digg This
Reddit This
Stumble Now!
Share on Facebook
Bookmark this on Delicious
Share on LinkedIn
Bookmark this on Technorati
Post on Twitter
Google Buzz (aka. Google Reader)