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A portable droplet microfluidic device for cortisol measurements using a competitive heterogeneous assay

A portable droplet microfluidic device for cortisol measurements using a competitive heterogeneous assay
A portable droplet microfluidic device for cortisol measurements using a competitive heterogeneous assay
Point-of-care monitoring of chemical biomarkers in real-time holds great potential in rapid disease diagnostics and precision medicine. However, monitoring is still rare in practice, as the measurement of biomarkers often requires time consuming and labour intensive assay procedures such as enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), which pose a challenge to an autonomous point-of-care device. This paper describes a prototype device capable of performing ELISA autonomously and repeatedly in a high frequency using droplet microfluidics. Driven by a specially designed peristaltic pump, the device can collect liquid samples from a reservoir, produce trains of droplets, complete magnetic bead based ELISA protocols and provide readouts with colourimetric measurement. Here, cortisol was chosen as a target analyte as its concentration in the human body varies on a circadian rhythm which may be perturbed by disease. The prototype device draws in and analyses 350 nL of the sample containing free bioactive cortisol every 10 seconds, with a sample-to-signal time of 10 minutes, and measures favourably in the analytical range of 3.175–100 ng ml−1, with reliably lower variability compared with the well plate based assay. As most ELISA type assays share similar procedures, we envisage that this approach could form a platform technology for measurement or even continuous monitoring of biomarkers in biological fluids at the point-of-care.
0003-2654
4535-4544
Evans, Gareth
672b0824-0879-446f-a2df-06b73b52b46c
Bhuiyan, Wahida, Taskin
726b7804-d43d-4516-b7e5-e63f60f03135
Pang, Susan
9742992c-2ec6-4348-bfd0-2f9e9a72db10
Warren, Brett
045f557a-5793-4860-8804-28608db26a4f
Makris, Kyriacos
35bd65cd-3a8b-4ab0-bec8-c4217d1cb0d1
Coleman, Sharon
2653c332-2105-46b7-98ca-450d88a3aa9f
Hassan, Sammer-Ul
8a5ae3f1-3451-4093-879e-85f40953da8b
Niu, Xize
f3d964fb-23b4-45db-92fe-02426e4e76fa
Evans, Gareth
672b0824-0879-446f-a2df-06b73b52b46c
Bhuiyan, Wahida, Taskin
726b7804-d43d-4516-b7e5-e63f60f03135
Pang, Susan
9742992c-2ec6-4348-bfd0-2f9e9a72db10
Warren, Brett
045f557a-5793-4860-8804-28608db26a4f
Makris, Kyriacos
35bd65cd-3a8b-4ab0-bec8-c4217d1cb0d1
Coleman, Sharon
2653c332-2105-46b7-98ca-450d88a3aa9f
Hassan, Sammer-Ul
8a5ae3f1-3451-4093-879e-85f40953da8b
Niu, Xize
f3d964fb-23b4-45db-92fe-02426e4e76fa

Evans, Gareth, Bhuiyan, Wahida, Taskin, Pang, Susan, Warren, Brett, Makris, Kyriacos, Coleman, Sharon, Hassan, Sammer-Ul and Niu, Xize (2021) A portable droplet microfluidic device for cortisol measurements using a competitive heterogeneous assay. Analyst, 146 (14), 4535-4544. (doi:10.1039/d1an00671a).

Record type: Article

Abstract

Point-of-care monitoring of chemical biomarkers in real-time holds great potential in rapid disease diagnostics and precision medicine. However, monitoring is still rare in practice, as the measurement of biomarkers often requires time consuming and labour intensive assay procedures such as enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), which pose a challenge to an autonomous point-of-care device. This paper describes a prototype device capable of performing ELISA autonomously and repeatedly in a high frequency using droplet microfluidics. Driven by a specially designed peristaltic pump, the device can collect liquid samples from a reservoir, produce trains of droplets, complete magnetic bead based ELISA protocols and provide readouts with colourimetric measurement. Here, cortisol was chosen as a target analyte as its concentration in the human body varies on a circadian rhythm which may be perturbed by disease. The prototype device draws in and analyses 350 nL of the sample containing free bioactive cortisol every 10 seconds, with a sample-to-signal time of 10 minutes, and measures favourably in the analytical range of 3.175–100 ng ml−1, with reliably lower variability compared with the well plate based assay. As most ELISA type assays share similar procedures, we envisage that this approach could form a platform technology for measurement or even continuous monitoring of biomarkers in biological fluids at the point-of-care.

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Accepted/In Press date: 24 May 2021
Published date: 21 July 2021
Additional Information: Funding Information: We thank the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, UK (EP/M012425/1), NIHR BRC Global NAMRIP, and Innovate UK (103736) for funding this work. Publisher Copyright: © The Royal Society of Chemistry.

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 450006
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/450006
ISSN: 0003-2654
PURE UUID: 5612e960-1096-4578-a4e8-354cd77ab5af
ORCID for Sammer-Ul Hassan: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-0319-5814

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Date deposited: 02 Jul 2021 16:34
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 12:45

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Contributors

Author: Gareth Evans
Author: Susan Pang
Author: Brett Warren
Author: Kyriacos Makris
Author: Sharon Coleman
Author: Xize Niu

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