Abstract

Optofluidic Devices For Disease Diagnosis

Lorena Dieguez, Staff Researcher, INL

The capacity of microfluidic platforms as tiny labs transitioned from a potential to a reality as demonstrated in the past 20 years. The microfluidics community developed extremely advanced systems able to perform almost any chemical and/or biological lab protocol. However, in order to develop integrated lab-on-a-chip diagnostic platforms, it is crucial to couple microfluidic devices with detection strategies able to match the inherent properties of microfluidics: high-throughput, automation and miniaturization. One of those detection techniques is surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) spectroscopy, an ultrasensitive and highly selective analytical technique with multiplexing ability. SERS is based on the use of plasmonic nanoparticles that act as nanoantennas and augment the very specific Raman signatures of molecules close to the nanostructured surfaces. We will show how the integration of different SERS sensing substrates and strategies within microfluidics and microdroplets offers a great flexibility for the diagnosis of several biological species and/or events. We will show examples in the context of liquid biopsy demonstrating the single-cell multiplex phenotypic analysis in a microdroplet, the detection of panels of mutations in cancer or the differentiation of cancer versus healthy cells. These approaches may be transferred to different analytical fields, such as the detection and discrimination of foodborne pathogens, bacteria or viruses in food or water samples.