Bioengineering Research Group, Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK.
Institute for Life Sciences, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK.
Biosensors (Basel). 2020 Apr 15;10(4):39. doi: 10.3390/bios10040039.
Point-of-care (POC) diagnostics enables the diagnosis and monitoring of patients from the clinic or their home. Ideally, POC devices should be compact, portable and operatable without the requirement of expertise or complex fluid mechanical controls. This paper showcases a chip-and-dip device, which works on the principle of capillary-driven flow microfluidics and allows analytes' detection by multiple microchannels in a single microchip via smartphone imaging. The chip-and-dip device, fabricated with inexpensive materials, works by simply dipping the reagents-coated microchip consisting of microchannels into a fluidic sample. The sample is loaded into the microchannels via capillary action and reacts with the reagents to produce a colourimetric signal. Unlike dipstick tests, this device allows the loading of bacterial/pathogenic samples for antimicrobial testing. A single device can be coated with multiple reagents, and more analytes can be detected in one sample. This platform could be used for a wide variety of assays. Here, we show the design, fabrication and working principle of the chip-and-dip flow device along with a specific application consisting in the determination of β-lactamase activity and cortisol. The simplicity, robustness and multiplexing capability of the chip-and-dip device will allow it to be used for POC diagnostics.
即时检测 (POC) 诊断能够在诊所或患者家中对其进行诊断和监测。理想情况下，POC 设备应小巧、便携且无需专业知识或复杂的流体力学控制即可操作。本文展示了一种基于毛细驱动流动微流控原理的芯片-浸泡式设备，可通过智能手机成像在单个微芯片上的多个微通道中检测分析物。该芯片-浸泡式设备由廉价材料制成，其工作原理是将包含微通道的涂有试剂的微芯片简单地浸入流体样品中。样品通过毛细作用加载到微通道中，并与试剂反应产生比色信号。与测试条测试不同，该设备允许加载细菌/病原体样本进行抗菌测试。单个设备可以涂覆多种试剂，并且可以在一个样本中检测到更多的分析物。该平台可用于各种检测。在这里，我们展示了芯片-浸泡式流动设备的设计、制造和工作原理，以及一个具体的应用，包括β-内酰胺酶活性和皮质醇的测定。芯片-浸泡式设备的简单性、鲁棒性和多路复用能力将使其能够用于即时诊断。
