Abstract

Making Molecular Diagnostics More Sensitive, Cheaper with Microfluidic Mixing

Richard Spero, CEO, Redbud Labs

Molecular diagnostics are rapidly moving from the central lab to point-of-care. Several new rapid, compact platforms are coming on the market, but poor limit of detection (LOD) limits their clinical utility. We report on recent case studies where our microfluidic mixing chip, MXR, was added to existing systems to dramatically accelerate molecular assays, improving LOD by up to 100x and enabling detection at single-digit copy number. Surprisingly, MXR did not increase cartridge cost. To the contrary, a design revision reduced cartridge cost by 2x.