The following are a few examples of the microfluidic lab-on-a-chip technologies of Diagnostic Chips:
?span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;"> Flow cytometer Lab-on-a-chip: A flow cytometer is a critical instrument for counting, examining, and sorting cells. It has wide applications in cancers, leukemia and HIV diagnosis and research, drug discovery, drug doping tests, stem cell and gene therapy, transplantation, hematology, tumor immunology and chemotherapy, genetics and sperm sorting for sex preselection, etc. DC’s flow cytometry chip device integrates electronics, fluidics, computer, optics, software, and laser technologies in a single platform. This fully automated handheld flow cytometer chip device can separate, count and detect various blood cells (e.g., CD+4) from a drop of blood. In contrast to the conventional flow cytometers that are bulky and expensive (e.g., $75,000~$125,000), DC’s handheld flow cytometer device costs only a few thousand dollars.
The light weight and
portability of these handheld devices ideally satisfy the critical demand for
on-the-spot detections. The potential users of handheld flow cytometer include international
immigration processing, US Homeland Security, and POC setting, such as hospitals or
medical clinics.
A prototype has been made and in the
process of testing and perfecting, to be ready for commercialization in
February, 2010.
?span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;"> Immunoassay lab-on-a-chip has been developed for detecting bacteria, viruses (e.g., HIV, SARS, anthrax and BSE (mad cow)), and cancers. The detection on this chip is based on antigen-antibody reactions. This chip is a fully automatic immunoassay laboratory in your hand, with high accuracy and low cost. It can simultaneously detect multiple pathogen targets from multiple samples on a single chip (in 25 minutes). This chip can be used for human disease diagnosis (e.g., AIDS, Hepatitis, PSA, E. coli infection), therapeutic drug monitoring and drugs of abuse screening, in-vitro-Fertilization Embryos Selection, etc. It also has wide applications in detecting bacteria and viruses for applications in agricultural, environmental, food safety, veterinary, and water quality.
?span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;"> DC-Dielectrophoresis (DC-DEP) lab-on-a-chip has been developed for separating cells and bacteria by size from biofluids. This method is based on a physical phenomena called DC-dielectrophoresis, and can continuously separate, for example, white blood cells or bacteria from blood, without cell labeling. The device has no mechanical moving parts and no filters. Its applications range from separating blood cells, stem cells, cancer cells, extracting plasma from blood, to forensic applications and reproduction technology (Sperm sorting, Embryo selection).
?span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;"> DNA extraction lab-on-a-chip: Most lab-on-a-chip devices require a purified DNA sample, because these devices do not have the capability to crack biological cells to extract DNA directly. Thus, most of today’s lab-on-a-chip devices still rely on conventional room-sized laboratories for sample pretreatment. This is a major limitation to the development and application of lab-on-a-chip technology. The DC’s DNA extraction chip can take a drop of blood, lyses the cell, extract DNA, and amplify the DNA by PCR. It will provide DNA samples for any other lab-chip devices for further analysis. This technology would make all lab-on-a-chip devices truly independent of the conventional lab.
?span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 7pt; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;"> Cellular lab-on-a-chip for single cell analysis. To find a cure or better medical treatment of diseases, it is necessary to study how living biological cells respond to drugs. DC’s lab-on-a-chip can count cells, separate a single cell from a population of cells, put the cell in a micro-chamber in the chip and then deliver reagents to the selected cell. A key capability of this chip is to control the micro-environment of the cell chamber in terms of the temperature, the nutrient and drug concentration gradients around the cell. Such a cell lab chip allows controlled, quantitative studies of living cells and has enormous potential in drug discovery and other pharmaceutical research and development. On-chip cancer tumor cell culture and cancer cell immunoassay have been successfully demonstrated.
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