All-in-One Biochip for Infectious Diseases 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 onsite identification of potential donors with blood borne diseases, will help to eliminate needless blood drawn, handling, storage, 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 (approximately 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 ultra-sensitive 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. Phase I work will focus on design and fabrication of the IDChip platform, construction of pressure-driven microfluidics, integration of the system, performance of bioassays (HBsAg, anti-HCV, anti-HAV, HIV-1), and evaluation of the system's performance.