Thermo-Optical Detection with Interferometric Microchips

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Conventional clinical analyses utilize slab gel and capillary electrophoresis (CE) to separate and detect components of interest, most notably proteins and DNA. Recently, miniaturized CE methods, using microchips, has brought the advantages of increased speed, reduced sample and reagent usage, and parallel analyses, allowing high throughput screening at greatly reduced costs. This has not translated into rapid clinical diagnostics for many species because absorption detection has not been easily transferable to the miniaturized formats. Luna Innovations and the University of Virginia propose to develop a thermo-optical absorbance detection system integrated with microchip-based separations. The proposed system will utilize remote ultrasensitive localized temperature measurement along the distributed sample within the microchip to determine concentration. This detection system will open up a number of important clinical applications for microchip electrophoretic separations. For the Phase I program, the Luna team will focus on demonstrating the system for the detection of amino acids in urine samples. Elevated levels of certain amino acids are indicative of various disease states, including inborn metabolic disorders, renal transport disorders, or liver malfunction. The development of a microchip electrophoresis method, for rapidly and inexpensively detecting and quantifying amino acid concentrations in urine, could speed diagnosis and greatly simplify monitoring of these disease states.