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Fully Automated Centrifugal Microfluidic Device for Ultrasensitive Protein Detection from Whole Blood

Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) is a promising method to detect small amount of proteins in biological samples. The devices providing a platform ...

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Culture, Manipulation, and Orthotopic Transplantation of Mouse Bladder Tumor Organoids

The development of advanced tumor models has long been encouraged because current cancer models have shown limitations such as lack of three-dimensional ...

School of Life Sciences, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), UNIST-gil 50, Ulsan, Republic of Korea

Pohang University of Science and Technology

In this study, we describe a novel platform based on centrifugal microfluidics for simultaneous determination of nitrite, nitrate and nitrite, ammonium, orthophosphate, and silicate in water samples. All processes from sample metering to detection were integrated and automatically conducted on a rotating disc-shaped device. Fluid transfer was controlled by laser irradiation on the ferrowax-based microvalves. Liquid samples and reagents were pumped by centrifugal force in the rotating disc, and their positions and movements were controlled through a programmable light from a laser diode. This novel water analysis platform required only 500 μL of sample (100 μL for each nutrient) and 10-30 μL of reagents for colorimetric detection. In addition, the fully automated parallel processes and efficient mixing in the rotating disc allowed for a significant reduction in total analysis time (∼7 min 40 s) and increased accuracy. Validation with a seawater certified reference material indicated that the platform accurately measured nutrient concentrations in water samples. In addition, we showed that the nutrients in the seawater collected from Chunsu Bay in Korea measured by the proposed lab-on-a-disc and by a commercialized autoanalyzer are comparable.

Lab-on-a-disc for simultaneous determination of nutrients in water.

We have developed a fully integrated centrifugal microfluidic device for rapid on-site quantification of lipids from microalgal samples. The fully automated serial process involving cell sedimentation and lysis, liquid-liquid extraction, and colorimetric detection of lipid contents was accomplished within 13 min using a lab-on-a-disc. The presented organic solvent-tolerable (for n-hexane, ethanol) microfluidic disc was newly fabricated by combining thermal fusion bonding and carbon dot-based valving techniques. It is expected that this novel platform will possibly contribute toward sustainable biofuel applications by providing a practical solution for on-site monitoring of lipid accumulation in microalgal samples, thus providing imperative contribution toward energy and environmental purposes of centrifugal microfluidic technology.

Yubin Kim

Department of Biomedical Engineering

School of Life Sciences, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), UNIST-gil 50, Ulsan, Republic of Korea

Fully Automated Centrifugal Microfluidic Device for Ultrasensitive Protein Detection from Whole Blood

Culture, Manipulation, and Orthotopic Transplantation of Mouse Bladder Tumor Organoids