Centrifugal Microfluidics for Biomedical Applications

Abstract

In this presentation, we will discuss our on-going research on “Lab-on-a-disc”, which applies centrifugal force to pump fluid for biochemical analysis. It is advantageous because of the capability to integrate and automate the analysis protocols into a disc-shaped device with simple, size-reduced, and cost-efficient instrumentation. We report various examples of fully integrated "lab-on-a-disc" for biomedical applications such as pathogen specific DNA extraction to test infectious diseases, multiplex enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), and isolation and analysis of circulating tumor cells starting from whole blood. Integration with centrifugal microfluidic technology allows us precise control of fluids while also reducing the expensive reagent consumption, the required analysis time and possible handling errors. We believe the presented result will not only improve the performance of the point-of-care-diagnostic devices but also potentially have great impact on global healthcare.