Lab on a Chip

1
Lab on a Chip

• Or The Incredible Shrinking Science Experiment!
• Or APOIBE!

Dr. Eric Lagally lagally_at_msl.ubc.ca
Credits Mathies Lab, UC-Berkeley Quake Lab,
Stanford Agilent, Inc.
2
Lab on a Chip?
3
Microfluidics

• Microfluidics The use of microfabrication
  techniques from the IC industry to fabricate
  channels, chambers, reactors, and active
  components on the size scale of the width of a
  human hair or smaller

Credit Dr. Karen Cheung, UBC ECE
4
Why use microfluidics?
Credit Dr. Karen Cheung, UBC ECE
1 molecule in 1 mL 1.6 x 10-18 M 1 molecule in
1 nL 1.6 x 10-15 M 1 molecule in 1 pL 1.6 x
10-12 M
5
Why use microfluidics?

• Sample savings nL of enzyme, not mL
• Faster analyses can heat, cool small volumes
  quickly
• Integration combine lots of steps onto a single
  device
• Novel physics diffusion, surface tension, and
  surface effects dominate
• This can actually lead to faster reactions!

6
Some interesting LOC applications

• Genetic analysis
• Portable devices for pathogen detection
• High-throughput biology
• Chemical synthesis
• Metabolite analysis
• Drug delivery systems

Courtesy of Dr. Boris Stoeber
7
Genetic analysis microsystems
8
Bacterial Pathogens
Food poisoning
Wound infections
Lung Disease
Dr. Sharon Peacock, University of Oxford
Biowarfare
Food poisoning Pathogenic E. coli gt1 in 10,000
in Canada Salmonella spp. as high as 1 in 50
eggs Wound infections Antibiotic-resistant S.
aureus as high as 50 Lung Disease Pseudomonas
spp. Mycobacterium tuberculosis Biowarfare An
thrax, plague, smallpox
9
Methods for Genetic Detection of Pathogens
OLD WAY
NEW WAY

• Develop bacterial pathogen detectors that are

Rapid (lt 1 hour)
General (many different types of pathogens)
Sensitive (detect a single cell)
Genetically Specific
Field-portable
10
PCR-CE Microsystem Fabrication
11
Portable System for Infectious Disease Detection
System measures 8 x 10 x 12 inches

• Complete fluorescence detection including
• 488-nm solid-state laser, PMT, optics,
• and detection electronics
• Heater and RTD electronics
• 4 high-voltage CE power supplies
• PDMS microvalve hardware
• Simple PC interface

12
Thermal Cycling Characteristics
gt 5X faster than conventional thermal cyclers
13
Application Tuberculosis (TB) detection
Disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis 9
million new cases of active TB every year
worldwide 2 million TB deaths every
year 450,000 new cases of multi-drug resistant
TB / yr 10 of TB cases in South Africa are XDR
TB strains, resistant to first- and second-line
antibiotics
14
Current TB detection methods

• 1. Fixation and staining with acid-fast stains
• (Ziehl-Neelsen or auramine stains)
• 2. Optical or fluorescence microscope
• examination ( ?10,000 organisms/mL)
• Culture in biosafety level 3 containment
• facility

In select cases, molecular detection is used to
verify diagnosis
"That TB destroys millions of lives around the
world every year shows that the current approach
is just not workingThe tools we have to treat
and diagnose TB are woefully inadequate and
outdated, and we're not seeing the necessary
urgency to tackle the disease." Dr. Tido von
Schoen-Angerer, Director, DWBs Campaign for the
Access to Essential Medicines
15
The Not-so-Distant Future
2008
PDA