lab on a chip tagged posts

Compact genetic testing device created for Covid-19 could be used to detect a range of pathogens, or conditions including cancer.

A virus diagnosis device that gives lab-quality results within just three minutes has been invented by engineers at the University of Bath, who describe it as the ‘world’s fastest Covid test’.

The prototype LoCKAmp device uses innovative ‘lab on a chip’ technology and has been proven to provide rapid and low-cost detection of Covid-19 from nasal swabs. The research team, based at the University of Bath, say the technology could easily be adapted to detect other pathogens such as bacteria — or even conditions like cancer.

The device works by rapidly releasing and amplifying genetic material from a nasal swab sample by carrying out a chemical reactio...

Investigators have developed a ‘lab on a chip’ technology that can simulate different levels of Non-alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease progression. Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) – the accumulation of liver fat in people who drink little or no alcohol – is increasingly common around the world, and in the United States, it affects between 30 and 40 percent of adults. Currently, there are no approved drugs for the treatment of NAFLD, which is predicted to soon become the main cause of chronic liver problems and the need for liver transplantation.

Now a team led by investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) has developed a “lab on a chip” technology that can simulate different levels of NAFLD progression in cells across a sing...

The system uses a commercial smartphone to acquire and interpret real-time images of an enzymatic amplification reaction that takes place in a silicon microfluidic chip that generates green fluorescence and displays a visual read-out of the test. The system is composed of an unmodified smartphone and a portable 3-D-printed cradle that supports the optical and electrical components, and interfaces with the rear-facing camera of the smartphone. Credit: Micro & Nanotechnology Laboratory, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

A multidisciplinary group that includes the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Washington at Tacoma has developed a novel platform to diagnose infectious disease at the point-of-care, using a smartphone as the detection instrument in con...

Integrated electrokinetically driven microfluidic devices with pH-mediated solid-phase extraction coupled to microchip electrophoresis for preterm birth biomarkers. ELECTROPHORESIS, 2017; DOI: 10.1002/elps.201700054

With help from a palm-sized plastic rectangle with a few pinholes in it, Brigham Young University researchers are hoping to minimize the problem of premature deliveries. The small chip – integrated microfluidic device, predicts with up to 90% accuracy, a woman’s risk for a future preterm birth. “It’s like we’re shrinking a whole laboratory and fitting it into one small microchip,” said BYU chemistry Ph.D. student Mukul Sonker.

In the US alone, a half million babies are born preterm; worldwide, the number is an estimated 15 million...