Abstract

Lab-on-a-Drone: Portable Robust Platforms for Mobile Point-of-Care Bioanalysis

Victor Ugaz, Professor & Holder of the Charles D. Holland ’53 Professorship, Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering, Texas A&M University

We describe recent innovations aimed at overcoming many of the roadblocks that have traditionally hindered deployment of advanced biochemical diagnostic technologies in field/resource-limited settings. Nucleic acid-based approaches like the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) are generally considered to be diagnostic gold standards in terms of both sensitivity and specificity. But PCR is largely ruled out as a viable candidate for portable deployment, particularly in resource-limited settings, due to an unfavorable combination of excessive electrical power requirements associated with repeated heating and cooling of reagents during thermocycling, and complexities related to inexpensively implementing fluorescence-based detection of the reaction products. We show how a unique convergence of scientific and technological breakthroughs from multiple disciplines have now made it possible to overcome these limitations, laying the foundation for a new generation of simple ruggedized POC diagnostic platforms.