A suction-type microfluidic immunosensing chip for rapid detection of the dengue virus

• Published in: Biomedical microdevices Vol. 13; no. 3; pp. 585 - 595
• Main Authors: Weng, Chen-Hsun, Huang, Tze-Bin, Huang, Chih-Chia, Yeh, Chen-Sheng, Lei, Huan-Yao, Lee, Gwo-Bin
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Boston Springer US 01.06.2011; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Biological and Medical Physics; Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering; Biophysics; Biosensing Techniques - instrumentation; Dengue Virus - isolation & purification; Dimethylpolysiloxanes - chemistry; Engineering; Engineering Fluid Dynamics; Fluid dynamics; Immunoassay - instrumentation; Limit of Detection; Medical diagnosis; Microelectromechanical systems; Microfluidic Analytical Techniques - instrumentation; Nanotechnology; Time Factors; Viral infections; Suction; Surface modification; Immunosensing; Dengue virus; Microfluidics; ELISA
• ISSN: 1387-2176; 1572-8781
• DOI: 10.1007/s10544-011-9529-3

The enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) is widely used in medical diagnostics. In order to reduce the diagnosis time and to lower the consumption of sample/reagents in an ELISA assay, a suction-type, automatic, pneumatically-driven microfluidic chip has been designed and fabricated in this study. The microfluidic chip integrates a multi-functional micro-transport/mixing unit, for transporting metering and mixing of samples and reagents in order to automatically perform the entire ELISA protocol. A new surface modification has been adopted which allows for a high processing capacity. The detection sensitivity for the dengue virus is found to be 10 1  PFU/ml, which is much better than a conventional ELISA assay (10 3  PFU/ml). The entire assay time is only 30 min, which is much faster than with 96-well microtiter plates (4 h). The consumed sample and reagent volume is only 12 μl, which is less than a conventional assay (100 μl). The development of this microfluidic chip may be promising for other immunosensing applications.