Tuesday, 21 June 2022 |
Please Refer to the Lab-on-a-Chip Agenda for Details of Programming on Tuesday, 21 June 2022 |
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Wednesday, 22 June 202208:00 | Morning Coffee, Tea and Networking in the Exhibit Hall | |
Session Title: Emerging Themes, Technologies in Microfluidics, Biosensors and POC Diagnostics Fields -- Challenges and Opportunities |
| | 09:00 |  | Keynote Presentation Free-Surface Microfluidics and SERS For High Performance Sample Capture and Analysis
Carl Meinhart, Professor, University of California-Santa Barbara, United States of America
Nearly all microfluidic devices to date consist of some type of fully-enclosed microfluidic channel. The concept of ‘free-surface’ microfluidics has been pioneered at UCSB during the past several years, where at least one surface of the microchannel is exposed to the surrounding air. Surface tension is a dominating force at the micron scale, which can be used to control effectively fluid motion. There are a number of distinct advantages to the free surface microfluidic architecture. For example, the free surface provides a highly effective mechanism for capturing certain low-density vapor molecules. This mechanism is a key component (in combination with surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy, i.e. SERS) of a novel explosives vapor detection platform, which is capable of sub part-per-billion sensitivity with high specificity. |
| 09:30 |  A Microfluidic Handheld Platform - Flexible Use With and Without Instrument
Claudia Gärtner, CEO, microfluidic ChipShop GmbH
| 10:00 | Microfluidic Concepts For Bringing More Precision to Point-of-Care Diagnostics
Emmanuel Delamarche, Senior Manager, Spiden AG, Switzerland
Diagnostics are ubiquitous in healthcare because they support prevention, diagnosis and treatment of diseases. Specifically, point-of-care (POC) diagnostics are particularly attractive for identifying diseases near patients, quickly, and in many settings and scenarios. In the context of infectious diseases, there is clearly an urgent need for bringing POC diagnostics to a next level in terms of speed and precision. In this presentation, I will detail some of the former work I did, while at IBM, on new concepts for encoding flow at the microscale using capillary phenomena, implementing highly miniaturized assays, monitoring flow, and making programmable capillary circuits. Specifically, I will provide an update on “self-coalescence modules” and on how these microfluidic elements can be used to implement fast biochemical reactions involving nanoliter volumes and parallel reactions in just a few square millimeters. | 10:30 | Mid-Morning Coffee and Tea Break and Networking in the Exhibit Hall | 11:00 |  | Keynote Presentation Towards Wearable Biosensing Technologies
Martyn Boutelle, Professor of Biomedical Sensors Engineering, Imperial College London, United Kingdom
The concentration of biomarker molecules can give important information about the physiological ‘well-being’ of a person. In Healthcare this is emerging as the personalization of healthcare – where data is used to track the progression of illness and the effects of treatment in a patient at the individual level, rather than using the population average. In lifestyle/fitness monitoring data can track the move from ‘wellness’ to exhaustion, fatigue, and dehydration. Our view is that to do such monitoring effectively ideally requires moment-by-moment measurement of concentration. One approach to this is using robust sensors controlled by to miniaturized wearable instrumentation. We have been developing a range of biosensing solutions for the invasive, minimally invasive, and non-invasive monitoring of people. I will describe the key challenges in the development of such wearable biosensing devices and present recent data demonstrating personal chemical monitoring in the fitness and healthcare realms. |
| 11:30 | Point-of-Care Testing of Small Analytes Using Paper-based Analytical Devices
Jean-Manuel Segura, Professor, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland Valais, Switzerland
Paper offers many advantages as a material to produce point-of-care (POC) diagnostic tests: Paper-based analytical devices (PAD) are cheap, amenable for mass manufacturing, easy to dispose after use and do not require external actuation. Many important biomarkers tested using PADs are small molecules. While some analytes such as glucose can be analyzed using enzymatic assays, most are quantified using competitive immunoassays, which require well-defined concentrations of the reagents (antibodies and tracers). This is not easy to achieve in a POC format, might result in assay variability and renders assay design more complex. During this talk, I will present two examples how competitive immunoassays can be implemented in paper-based analytical devices for POC applications. In a first example, I will describe the development of a lateral flow assay for salivary cortisol, a biomarker of chronic stress. The low concentration and the stringent requirements on assay precision make the development of such a test challenging. A detailed understanding of the underlying immunoassay mechanism enabled a considerable improvement of the performance. In a second example, I will discuss the development of a vertical flow assay for the antibiotics tobramycin, which requires therapeutic drug monitoring to ensure efficacy while avoiding oto- and nephrotoxicity. A homogeneous competitive immunoassay based on fluorescence polarization was implemented inside paper microzones hosting both plasma extraction and detection. | 12:00 | Optical Molecular Sensing and Imaging of Cancer
Mark Bradley, Professor of Therapeutic Innovation, Precision Healthcare University Research Institute, Queen Mary University of London, United Kingdom
In my talk I will describe a number of technologies that have come out of the Proteus project that has, as its focus, the use of light (of a variety of flavors) to sense and image disease. This includes:
(i). The use of optical fibers for measuring pH around tumors;
(ii). The application of chemical probes that can paint disease (bacterial infection and cancer will be illustrated);
(iii). The use of novel CMOS SPAD detectors that allows for rapid full spectral fluorescent lifetime imaging to be used in the analysis of cancerous tissues (targeting cancer margin detection).
| 12:30 | Networking Lunch in the Exhibit Hall with Exhibitors and Conference Sponsors + Poster Viewing | 13:45 |  Poster Prizes Announced - Poster Prizes Sponsored by the Royal Society of Chemistry UK
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Session Title: Breakout Session -- Abstracts Submitted and Oral Presentations Therefrom |
| | 14:00 | Elasto-Magnetic Pumps for Point-of-Care Diagnostics
Jacob Binsley, Researcher, University of Exeter, United Kingdom
We have developed a possible novel pumping solution and have fabricated and tested an experimental, elasto-magnetic micropump inspired by Purcell’s 3-link swimmer. This design, consisting of 3 elasticated links made from PDMS, is coupled to an external magnetic driving field via the inclusion of a small Neodymium Iron Boron magnet. When provided with a weak, uniaxial oscillating driving field with flux density of 10s of gauss and frequency in the range of 10s of Hz, the device produces tuneable and reversible fluid flow. During our most recent investigations, we modelled this system numerically using COMSOL Multiphysics to not only verify our experiments, but to explore the device more deeply and gain an understanding of how this system may be optimised. These new numerical results will be the main subject of this talk, and offer valuable and very visual insight into bio-inspired pumping mechanisms for lab-on-a-chip POC devices. | 14:30 | An Opto-Microfluidic Lab-on-a-Chip in Lithium Niobate for Protein Concentration Analysis
Leonardo Zanini, Research Scientist, University of Padova, Italy
This presentation shows an opto-microfluidic lab-on-a-chip applied to
protein concentration investigation. By integrating droplet
microfluidics with miniaturized waveguides, this device sets a new
frontier in biological sample processing, merging miniaturization and
sample saving with real-time content analysis. | 15:00 | Towards Microfluidic Design Automation: System Modelling of Complete Microfluidic Networks
Julia Boeke, Researcher, Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology, Germany
Microfluidic design automation enables the model-based design of
complete and complex lab-on-a-chip systems. We proposed a microfluidic
network solver utilizing Kirchhoff laws to model the entire microfluidic
network in less than 200 ms for microfluidic design automation. | 15:30 |  The Next Evolution in Microfluidic 3D Printing
Hemdeep Patel, President, Co-Founder, CADworks3D
| 16:00 |  | Keynote Presentation Singlet Oxygen-Based Photoelectrochemical DNA Sensing
Karolien De Wael, Full Professor, Antwerp University, Belgium
To avoid the main drawback of semiconductor-based photoelectrochemical (PEC) systems, i.e. the uncontrollable nature of photo-induced charge or electron transfer processes, a novel and innovative PEC sensing paradigm has been introduced. The sensing paradigm is based on the unique feature of type II molecular photosensitizers to transfer the excitation energy to oxygen generating 1O2. Indeed, the action is initiated by the absorption of a photon to yield an excited sensitizer. Reactions of the excited sensitizer can involve Type I or Type II reactions via intersystem crossing. The latter involves an energy transfer from the excited photosensitizer to O2 to yield 1O2 and is of particular interest for our paradigm. It will be a matter of minimizing or controlling the contribution of Type I reactions in the mechanism through the selection of the photosensitizer or the use of quenchers. The Type II photosensitizers can also be used as molecular labels coupled to specific DNA sequences for highly sensitive and cost-efficient photoelectrochemical DNA sensing applications. In this lecture, the sensing mechanism will be explained together with the photoelectrochemical properties of molecular photosensitizers used as labels for biomolecules. The photocatalytic activity of different photosensitizers in solution and attached to ssDNA have been evaluated in the absence and presence of a redox reporter (hydroquinone). Both type I and type II photosentiziers were studied. In particular, a porphyrin chlorin e6 was found to give a well-detectable photocurrent response in solution or as a label attached to ssDNA. With an intrinsic background elimination by switching the light ON/OFF, this photoelectrochemical strategy provides enhanced sensitivity. The quantification of prostate cancer related miRNAs in human serum will be discussed, and positioned towards electrochemiluminescent assays. |
| 16:30 | Hydrodynamically Controlled Cross-Slot Microfluidic Trap for High Strain Rate Applications
Aravind George, PhD Student, The University of Melbourne, Australia
An automated hydrodynamic cross-slot microfluidic trap capable of generating high strain rates, thus, an improvised platform to apply long-term, highly accurate and controllable spatially uniform strain rates to study the effect of straining flow at single cell level. | 17:00 | Microscopy Platform To Unravel Sperm Propulsion
Farzan Akbaridoust, Research Fellow, University of Melbourne, Australia
A unique microscopy technique to discover the hydrodynamic mechanism of sperm propulsion by unravelling the formation of locomotion-generated vortical flow structures. | 17:30 | Chip-Sized Cell Gene Modification System For Integration Into Modular Microfluidics
Hashim Alhmoud, Marie-Curie Actions Post-Doctoral Fellow, Bilkent University, Turkey
The design of a modular lab-on-a-chip component with a small footprint for intracellular cargo delivery is presented. Using the microfluidics-compatible mechanism, the membranes of cells interacting with the mechanism are temporarily permeabilized to allow extracellular cargo to enter the cytosol. | 18:00 | Single Cell and Microparticle Sensing with Microwave Sensor
Uzay Tefek, Graduate Student, Bilkent University, Turkey
Real-time, rapid and accurate analysis of cells and microparticles is an important feature in biological and environmental sensing applications. In this study, we investigated whether the difference in dielectric properties of particles and cells in a solution passing through microfluidic could be detected and characterized by using a microwave sensor. With this system, we were able to use the dielectric signature of the analytes to distinguish different analyte particles (mammalian cells, different microplastics) from each other. To probe the internal structure of materials and avoid Debye screening, we worked at the microwave band using resonant sensors probed by a custom circuitry. Different entities, such as MDA-231 cells, and microplastic particles with different compositions and sizes were passed through the microchannel, and the signals they induced on the microwave sensors were matched with their optical images. By plotting the optical size vs. the microwave signals, it was observed that data for each particle class, clustered at a unique position in the sensing space, providing both size and material classification capability. The approach presented here opens up a path for label-free material classification and size detection in microfluidic systems.
| 18:30 | Close of Programming on Day 2 of the Conference |
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