CASE STUDIES
Trusted by researchers worldwide
2023
A new study published in Nature in 2022 describes a breakthrough in miniaturizing ELISA using microfluidic chain reaction. Researchers were able to structurally encode an ELISA for detecting antibodies into a small chip, eliminating the need for external equipment. However, challenges remain with precise pipetting and surfactant tolerance, limiting broader adoption. Read More
2022
To improve basic designs for even temperature distribution, several steps were taken. These included creating a model of the design, testing it, making changes as needed, and repeating the process until the desired results were achieved. Read More
2022
During cochlear implant (CI) insertion, the mechanical trauma causes a loss of residual hearing in up to 50% of implantations. This can severely limit CI performance through neural degeneration and fibrosis caused by acute mechanical damage and chronic inflammation. Read More
2022
Silicon photonic (SiP) evanescent-field biosensors aim to combine the information-rich readouts offered by lab-scale diagnostics, at a significantly lower cost, and with the portability and rapid time to result offered by paper-based assays. Read More
2022
The PDMS-based microfluidic organ-on-chip platform represents an exciting paradigm that has enjoyed a rapid rise in popularity and adoption. A particularly promising element of this platform is its amenability to rapid manufacturing strategies, which can enable quick adaptations through iterative prototyping. Read More
2022
Privacy protection is a growing concern in the digital era, with machine vision techniques widely used throughout public and private settings. Existing methods address this growing problem by, e.g., encrypting camera images or obscuring/blurring the imaged information through digital algorithms. Read More
2022
Stereolithographic (SL) 3D printing, especially digital light processing (DLP) printing, is a promising rapid fabrication method for bio-microfluidic applications such as clinical tests, lab-on-a-chip devices, and sensor integrated devices. Read More
2022
Plastic pollution has emerged as a growing concern worldwide. In particular, the most abundant plastic debris, microplastics, has necessitated the development of rapid and effective identification methods to track down the stages and evidence of the pollution. Read More
2022
Chain reactions, characterized by initiation, propagation and termination, are stochastic at microscopic scales and underlie vital chemical (for example, combustion engines), nuclear and biotechnological (for example, polymerase chain reaction) applications. Read More
2022
Sandwich immunoassays such as the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) have been miniaturized and performed in a lab-on-a-chip format, but the execution of the multiple assay steps typically requires a computer or complex peripherals. Recently, an ELISA for detecting antibodies was encoded structurally in a chip thanks to the microfluidic chain reaction but the need for precise pipetting and intolerance to commonly used surfactant concentrations limited the potential for broader adoption. Read More
2021
With the microfluidics community embracing 3D resin printing as a rapid fabrication method, controlling surface chemistry has emerged as a new challenge. Fluorination of 3D-printed surfaces is highly desirable in many applications due to chemical inertness, low friction coefficients, antifouling properties, and the potential for selective hydrophobic patterning. Read More
2020
Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is a long‐standing material of significant interest in microfluidics due to its unique features. As such, rapid prototyping of PDMS‐based microchannels is of great interest. Read More
2020
Inertial microfluidics has been broadly investigated, resulting in the development of various
applications, mainly for particle or cell separation. Lateral migrations of these particles within a
microchannel strictly depend on the channel design and its cross-section. Read More
2020
Organ-on-a-chip is a microfluidic cell culture model that replicates key organ-specific microarchitecture and pathophysiology in vitro. The current methods to fabricate these devices rely on softlithography, which is usually tedious, laborious, and requires adroit users as well as cleanroom facilities. Read More
2020
The ability to detect rare human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) in differentiated populations is critical for safeguarding the clinical translation of cell therapy, as these undifferentiated cells have the capacity to form teratomas in vivo. The detection of hPSCs must be performed using an approach compatible with traceable manufacturing of therapeutic cell products. Here, we report a novel microfluidic approach, stem cell quantitative cytometry (SCQC), for the quantification of rare hPSCs in hPSC-derived cardiomyocyte (CM) populations. Read More
2019
Background: Tumor heterogeneity and evolution of SCLC is poorly defined. Serial longitudinal interrogation of tumor heterogeneity from CTCs detected in peripheral blood patient (pt) samples is a potential strategy to address this gap in knowledge. Read More
2018
The second edition of the “Summer School on Complex Fluid-Flows in Microfluidics” was held at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, Portugal from July 9 – 13, 2018 sponsored by Anton Paar, Applied Sciences, BlackHole Lab, Elveflow, Formulaction, the Portuguese Society of Rheology, and Rheinforce (in alphabetical order). The company Creative CADWorks kindly provided microfluidic connectors, chips and molds fabricated with its 3Dprinter. Read More
2018
Cell-to-cell variation in gene expression creates a need for techniques that can characterize expression at the level of individual cells. This is particularly true for rare circulating tumour cells, in which subtyping and drug resistance are of intense interest. Here we describe a method for cell analysis—single-cell mRNA cytometry—that enables the isolation of rare cells from whole blood as a function of target mRNA sequences. Read More
2018
During cancer progression, many tumours shed circulating tumour cells (CTCs) and other biomarkers into the bloodstream. The analysis of CTCs offers the prospect of collecting a liquid biopsy from a patient’s blood to predict and monitor therapeutic responses and tumour recurrence. In this Review, we discuss progress towards the isolation and recovery of bulk CTCs from whole blood samples for the identification of cells with high metastatic potential. Read More
2017
Organ-on-a-chip engineering aims to create artificial living organs that mimic the complex and physiological responses of real organs, in order to test drugs by precisely manipulating the cells and their microenvironments. Read More
2016
Profiling the heterogeneous phenotypes of rare circulating tumour cells (CTCs) in whole blood is critical to unravelling the complex and dynamic properties of these potential clinical markers. This task is challenging because these cells are present at parts per billion levels among normal blood cells. Here we report a new nanoparticle-enabled method for CTC characterization, called magnetic ranking cytometry, which profiles CTCs on the basis of their surface expression phenotype. We achieve this using a microfluidic chip that successfully processes whole blood samples. Read More
2016
Bonding of polymer-based microfluidics to polymer substrates still poses a challenge for Lab-On-a-Chip applications. Especially, when sensing elements are incorporated, patterned deposition of adhesives with curing at ambient conditions is required. Here, we demonstrate a fabrication method for fully printed microfluidic systems with sensing elements using inkjet and stereolithographic 3D-printing. Read More
