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Sample-in-answer-out

You have worked hard all year and wanted to treat yourself with something different for the summer. You decided to arrange a journey to South-Africa to enjoy the beautiful natural scenery. Discovering the range of wildlife in immense national parks, hiking in mountains, and meeting with warm locals made your journey unforgettable. You arrived at one of the best photography spots in a national park just before the sunset. While focussing on capturing the best image from the picturesque scenery, you got bitten by a Marsh mosquito, perhaps infected with a Plasmodium falciparum parasite. This parasite is known for causing malaria, the most significant parasitic disease of humans. You are not the only one: approximately 30,000 travellers from industrialized countries contract malaria each year. During the next 14 days, this parasite will differentiate and proliferate in the body. It will invade and destroy the red blood cells, eventually affecting the liver, spleen, and brain functionality. A few days after the bite, you found a small-scale laboratory for the malaria diagnosis test, but there was a problem: this laboratory can detect malaria only if you have 50-100 parasites per microliter of blood, occurring when the patient carries the parasite for weeks. You, then, had to find a larger laboratory equipped with a benchtop loop-mediated isothermal DNA amplification (LAMP) system, which can detect 1 malaria parasite per microlitre of blood. You wished there was a highly sensitive device for malaria diagnosis at the point of need. Well, we might have some good news for you.

Modern nucleic acid testing methods of malaria detection, such as LAMP, enable high sensitivity, high specificity, robust, and rapid analyses for asymptomatic infections. As performing these methods requires bulky and costly peripheral equipment and trained technicians, access to such equipment in rural areas is unlikely. Fortunately, researchers in Pennsylvania State University recently introduced a stand-alone, portable, and high sensitivity system that can perform “sample-in-answer-out” analyses. The system consists of a compact disc and a reader unit (Figure 1). The compact disc includes valves and microfluidic channels, where the blood sample is processed using magnetic beads. The reader unit can automatically perform all analysis steps including DNA purification, elution, amplification, and real-time detection. For a real demonstration of how the test is performed, the movie included below is well worth the watch. Test results can be displayed on a LCD screen or a smartphone within 40 minutes. The system can detect down to 0.6 parasites per microliter of blood. Each test costs around $1. With these specifications, this technology has the opportunity to create a new paradigm in molecular diagnosis at the point of care.

malaria detection test

Figure 1. Schematic view of an assembled compact disc made of PMMA; AnyMDX reading unit consisting of a magnet, heater plate, optical detection system, and LCD screen; and the illustration of integrated sample processing steps on the compact disc. The technique is based on DNA-carrying magnetic beads actuated against stationary reagent droplets.

To download the full article for free* click the link below:

A field-deployable mobile molecular diagnostic system for malaria at the point of need

Gihoon Choi, Daniel Song, Sony Shrestha, Jun Miao, Liwang Cuic and Weihua Guan

Lab Chip, 2016, Articles

DOI: 10.1039/C6LC01078D

About the Webwriter

Burcu Gumuscu is a postdoctoral fellow in BIOS Lab on a Chip Group at University of Twente in The Netherlands. Her research interests includedevelopment of microfluidic devices for next generation sequencing, compartmentalized organ-on-chip studies, and desalination of water on the microscale.

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What can a magnet do?

The magic of magnetism can be shown through a simple classroom demonstration of bringing two magnetic pieces together and then trying to pull them apart. The attraction between the opposite poles of the magnets becomes very apparent as you struggle to tear them apart. This simple concept can be applied to lab-on-a-chip devices to eliminate the need for off-device hardware with power requirements, and therefore, enable the use of lab-on-a-chip technology in low-resource settings.

The majority of existing lab-on-a-chip systems use manual pipettes, syringe pumps, or pressure pump systems to manipulate the fluid flow. The dependence on off-chip hardware, however, makes the integration of these systems into low-cost environments rather challenging. Researchers in both, academia and industry think that this challenge can be addressed by “manually operated self-contained microfluidic devices”, which has gained significant attention over the past couple of years. In line with this objective, magnetically-adhesive based valves have for the first time shown to control fluid flow in a microfluidic device in a recent collaboration work by Sandia National Labs and Qorvo Inc. Here, the “magnetic-adhesive based valve” simply consists of a disk magnet seated on a thin ring of adhesive material.

In this study, a microfluidic device is designed to perform bioassays and contains a port connecting two chambers in different planes. The port is closed by an internal magnet located on a pressure-sensitive adhesive tape, and is opened by the help of an external magnet which displaces the internal magnet (figure 1). When the port is open, the reagents can flow in the microchannels, as shown in figure 2. The adhesive tape prevents any leakage within the microchip, while the magnet serves as an actuatable gate for reagents. The microfluidic device, therefore, allows for storage and on-demand transport of different types of reagents (both liquid, solid, and gas) to perform bioassays.

Magnetic-adhesive based valves are fabricated at the millimeter-scale, however, it is possible to manufacture micron-sized valves depending on the resolution of the laser ablation system used to cut the valve layout. Design considerations and characterization of magnetic-adhesive based valves are further addressed in the paper. Apart from this, the self-contained device is made of low-cost materials (such as PMMA and magnetic alloys), resulting in a fabrication cost as low as 0.2 dollars per chip. As portable and low-cost devices start to draw increasing attention in lab-on-a-chip technology, this work might be an important milestone for next generation micro total analysis systems.

Magnetic valves for lab on a chip sytems

Figure 1. Schematic and photos of magnetic-adhesive based valve working mechanism.

Magnetic valves for lab on a chip devices

Figure 2. Controlled transport and reaction of the stored components in a simple, power- and instrument-free manner in a three chambered microfluidic device.

This is a recently published Hot article and you can download it for free* by clicking the link below:

Magnetic-adhesive based valves for microfluidic devices used in low-resource settings

Jason C. Harper, Jenna M. Andrews, Candice Ben, Andrew C. Hunt, Jaclyn K. Murton, Bryan D. Carson, George D. Bachand, Julie A. Lovchik, William D. Arndt, Melissa R. Finley and Thayne L. Edwards

Lab Chip, 2016, Recent HOT Articles

DOI: 10.1039/C6LC00858E


About the Webwriter

Burcu Gumuscu is a postdoctoral fellow in BIOS Lab on a Chip Group at University of Twente in The Netherlands.

Her research interests include development of microfluidic devices for next generation sequencing, compartmentalized organ-on-chip studies, and desalination of water on the microscale .

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