Lab on a Chip Blog

If you haven’t already heard of Marblar, the crowd-sourcing website that enables many minds to work together to realise the potential of new technologies, then now is the time to find out more, as the Royal Society of Chemistry is sponsoring a Marblar challenge to find  applications for a new microfluidic mixing device developed by Huanming Zia and co-workers based on their 2012 communication in Lab on a Chip!

Converting steady laminar flow to oscillatory flow through a hydroelasticity approach at microscales
H. M. Xia, Z. P. Wang, W. Fan, A. Wijaya, W. Wanga and Z. F. Wanga  
DOI: 10.1039/C1LC20667B

The microfluidic mixer is a non-powered device that can be added in-line to convert laminar flow to oscillatory flow, achieving effective mixing in milliseconds – ordinarily the laminar flow behaviour at these scales means fluid streams only mix very slowly via diffusion, which has been a big limitation for development of microfluidic products.

If you might have an idea or think you could improve on someone else’s, then join in the discussion and maybe even submit an idea or two to win points and marbles!

Congratulations to Ali Khademhosseini, writer of the regular Lab on a Chip Research Highlights articles, who has this year received three prestigious research awards!

In June, he received the 2013 Owens Corning Early Career Award of the American Institute for Chemical Engineers (AIChE) for outstanding contributions in applying micro/nanoscale technologies to engineer functional biomaterials for regenerative medicine. This award recognizes outstanding independent contributions to the scientific, technological, or educational areas of materials science and engineering by a member of the Materials Engineering and Sciences Division of the AIChE under 40. The award will be presented at November’s annual meeting of AIChE in San Francisco.

Professor Khademhosseini was also recently awarded the 2013 IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society’s Technical Achievement Award. The award is given to recognize outstanding achievement, contribution and/or innovation in a technical area of biomedical engineering. He received the award at the annual EMBS meeting in Japan last week.

In April, we blogged to congratulate Ali on winning the Controlled Release Society Young Investigator award, which will be presented at the end of this month in Hawaii!

View some of Ali’s recent Research Highlights articles here:

Research highlights
Imee G. Arcibal, Donald M. Cropek, Mehmet R. Dokmeci and Ali Khademhosseini 
DOI: 10.1039/C3LC90037A

Research highlights
João Ribas, Mark W. Tibbitt, Mehmet R. Dokmeci and Ali Khademhosseini
DOI: 10.1039/C3LC90032K

Research highlights
Šeila Selimović, Mehmet R. Dokmeci and Ali Khademhosseini
DOI: 10.1039/C3LC90025H

Research highlights
Šeila Selimović, Mark W. Tibbitt, Mehmet R. Dokmeci and Ali Khademhosseini
DOI: 10.1039/C3LC90018E

Congratulations go to Chang Lu at the School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences at Virginia Tech has been awarded a new National Institutes of Health project to continue his work with Albert Baldwin at The University of North Carolina on the molecular mechanisms of cancer.

Preliminary work by Chang Lu and co-workers published in Lab on a Chip in 2011 focused on histone modification analysis using a microfluidic platform. Their microfluidics device enables traditional chromatin immunoprecipitation assays (ChIP) using much lower numbers of cells in a much quicker time. All steps are conducted on-chip. The assay is coupled with RT-PCR to give a speedier method for analysis of scarce biological samples.

This new grant from the NIH is to continue this work in designing more advanced, more sensitive on-chip ChIP assays as part of the institutes’ National Cancer Initiative.

Read the first paper in Lab on a Chip today:

Histone modification analysis by chromatin immunoprecipitation from a low number of cells on a microfluidic platform
Tao Geng, Ning Bao,   Michael D. Litt, Trevor G. Glaros, Liwu Lid and Chang Lu  
DOI: 10.1039/C1LC20253G

The first ever Video Abstract for an RSC Publishing article is now available to view on the Publishing Platform!

The article chosen to demonstrate the video abstract capability now on the Publishing Platform is a Lab on a Chip Critical Review titled “Nanofluidic technology for biomolecule applications: a critical review” published in 2010 by Maria Napoli, Jan Eijkel and Sumita Pennathur from University of California Santa Barbara.

The comprehensive review covers the basics of nanofluidics principles and phenomena and its application to studying biomolecules. To find out the critical points covered and work out whether this article would be relevant for you to read in full, all you need to do now is watch the video!

Nanofluidic technology for biomolecule applications: a critical review
M. Napoli,   J. C. T. Eijkel and   S. Pennathur
DOI: 10.1039/B917759K

Development of a point-of-care DVD HIV diagnostic device published in Lab on a Chip has been featured on The Guardian’s Global Development Network.

The team led by Aman Russom at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden present a new lab on a DVD for rapid, cheap HIV diagnosis. They modify a commercial DVD drive for this purpose, giving a laser scanning microscope termed DVD-LSM. 

A multi-layer disc is combined with the modified DVD reader that allows temperature control. A fluidic polymer disc bonded to the DVD enables sample processing. Fluid propulsion is incorporated, a photodiode array is present for detection and all of the software for processing  is driven by a PC. The system enables imaging of biomolecules to 1  μm resolution.

A low level of CD4+ cells is the marker used to decide upon HIV treatment. The surface of the disc is functionalised with anti-CD4 antibodies to allow the system to detect and count stained CD4+ cells.

The combination of robust fluidic sample handling, detection capability and sub-micron resolution imaging means this fully integrated device is a hugely important step towards practical point-of-care Lab-on-DVD diagnostics. The team aim to reduce the sample preparation steps to simplify the procedure.

You can read the Guardian Global Development Network article here or skip straight to the full fascinating and clearly written Lab on a Chip article.

Lab-on-DVD: standard DVD drives as a novel laser scanning microscope for image based point of care diagnostics
Harisha Ramachandraiah, Mary Amasia, Jackie Cole, Paul Sheard, Simon Pickhaver, Chris Walker, Valtteri Wirta, Preben Lexow, Richard Lione and Aman Russom 
DOI: 10.1039/C3LC41360H

 We’re extremely pleased to report that Ali Khademhosseini, the writer of Research Highlights articles in Lab on a Chip, has been awarded the Young Investigator Award from the Controlled Release Society.

The award is for a young CRS member who has made an outstanding contribution to the science of controlled release and drug delivery. Ali will be presented with the award in July at the annual CRS meeting in Hawaii.

View some of his most recent Research Highlights articles here:

Research highlights
Imee G. Arcibal, Donald M. Cropek, Mehmet R. Dokmeci and Ali Khademhosseini 
DOI: 10.1039/C3LC90037A

Research highlights
João Ribas, Mark W. Tibbitt, Mehmet R. Dokmeci and Ali Khademhosseini
DOI: 10.1039/C3LC90032K

Research highlights
Šeila Selimović, Mehmet R. Dokmeci and Ali Khademhosseini
DOI: 10.1039/C3LC90025H

Research highlights
Šeila Selimović, Mark W. Tibbitt, Mehmet R. Dokmeci and Ali Khademhosseini
DOI: 10.1039/C3LC90018E