All-in-One Biochip for Infectious Disease Screening

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Every three seconds someone in the United States requires donated blood, which correlates to approximately 40,000 pints of blood used each day. Current laboratory tests for blood screening are time consuming and must be performed "consecutively" for all infectious diseases. Rapid on-site identification of potential donors with blood borne diseases will help to eliminate needless blood draws, handling, storage, and transportation costs, and will help to prevent further infections. This project will develop an all-in-one infectious diseases chip (IDChip) technology that can rapidly, sensitively, and "simultaneously" detect and identify multiple (6-10) blood transmissible diseases. This all-in-one IDChip contains all required reagents, so loading a very small volume from a finger-stick is the only manual involvement required. This disposable IDChip utilizes microfabrication and integrated microfluidic technologies to provide ultrasensitive biochemistry automation in a disc package. The IDChip system is compact, portable, and will help to ensure that the nation's blood supply is free from infectious diseases. During the Phase I project, we have designed and fabricated a microfluidic based IDChip, constructed a laboratory system, and characterized the system with three targets: Hepatitis B Surface antigen (HBsAg), Hepatitis B Core Antibody (HBcAb), and Hepatitis C Virus Antibody (HCVAb), performed control experiments, and demonstrated the assay capabilities. The proposed IDChip system not only automated a rapid test (< 25 minutes), but also offers excellent sensitivity.