Abstract

Enhancing the Detection Speed and Sensitivity of Exosomal microRNA by Electrokinetic Pre-concentration for Liquid Biopsy on Chip

Yong-Ak (Rafael) Song, Assistant Professor of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering, New York University Abu Dhabi

An ion concentration polarization (ICP)-based electrokinetic concentration device is used for accelerating surface hybridization reaction between exosomal microRNA (miRNA) and morpholinos (MO) as synthetic oligo capture probe at nanomolar concentration range in a microfluidic channel. Compared with standard hybridization at the same concentration, hybridization time of miRNA target on MO capture probes could be reduced from ~24 h to 30 min, an increase of detection speed by 48 times. This ICP-enhanced hybridization method not only significantly decreases detection time but makes workflow simple to use, circumventing use of qRT-PCR or other conventional enzyme-based amplification methods that can cause artifacts.