New Opportunities to Detect Disease and Probe Microbials Using Lab-on-a-Chip Devices
Amy Shen,
Provost, Professor,
Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology
Microfluidics and lab-on-a-chip devices have emerged as powerful
platforms to manipulate fluids at small length-scales and open up new
possibilities in biophysics and biotechnology research. In this talk, I
will showcase two examples of using microfluidics for microbial
population research and disease diagnosis.
- A microfluidic
device with controlled microenvironment is developed to study
population genetics: many microbial populations proliferate in small
channels. In such environments, reproducing cells organize in parallel
lanes. Reproducing cells shift these lanes, potentially expelling other
cells from the channel. We combine theory and experiments to understand
how these dynamics affects the diversity of a microbial population.
- The
rapid transmission and resilience of COVID-19 have led to urgent
demands in monitoring humoral response for effective vaccine
development, thus a multiplex co-detection platform to discriminate
infection-induced from vaccine-induced antibodies is needed. A duplex
electrochemical immunosensor for co-detection of anti-nucleocapsid IgG
(N-IgG) and anti-spike IgG (S-IgG) is developed by using a two-working
electrode system, via an indirect immunoassay, with antibody
quantification obtained by differential pulse voltammetry. This duplex
immunosensor is then integrated in a microfluidic device to obtain
significantly reduced detection time < 7 min) while maintaining its
analytical performance. Our duplex microfluidic immunosensor can be
easily expanded into multiplex format to achieve high throughput
screening for the sero-surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 and other infectious
diseases.
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