Abstract

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.