Blood-based diagnostic biomarker testing currently requires a substantial amount of blood to be drawn from the patient. Researchers at Brigham Young University have developed a microfluidic device that may help reduce the amount of blood needed for sampling. It relies on covalently attaching antibodies to a thin polymer film lining the wells of the microdevice, and running the blood serum through an even electric field. Detecting the speed of the particles moving through the channel points to the nature of the protein marker under investigation. The current device is capable of detecting four biomarkers, but should be expandable to deal with many more.
From the study abstract in Lab on a Chip:
Here, we developed integrated microdevices with an affinity column and capillary electrophoresis channels to isolate and quantitate a panel of proteins in complex matrices. To form an affinity column, a thin film of a reactive polymer was photopolymerized in a microchannel, and four antibodies were covalently immobilized to it. The retained protein amounts were consistent from chip to chip, demonstrating reproducibility. Furthermore, the signals from four fluorescently labeled proteins captured on-column were in the same range after rinsing, indicating the column has little bias toward any of the four antibodies or their antigens. These affinity columns have been integrated with capillary electrophoresis separation, enabling us to simultaneously quantify four protein biomarkers in human blood serum in the low ng mLâˆ’1 range using either a calibration curve or standard addition. Our systems provide a fast, integrated and automated platform for multiple biomarker quantitation in complex media such as human blood serum.
Abstract in Lab on a Chip: Microdevices integrating affinity columns and capillary electrophoresis for multibiomarker analysis in human serum
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