When people talk about microfluidic devices and their potential applications, they always talk about the cheapness and portability of viral detection and delivery devices. There always is an undercurrent, though, of startups, price points, and giant companies being used for distribution and sales. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but such an important and potentially life-saving technology doesn't need to be so tightly controlled by those with the biggest financial interests.

That's one reason it's so uplifting to find out about Diagnostics for All—a non-profit organization that is trying to bring lab-on-a-chip technologies to parts of the world that may not be able to afford it. The company uses a patterned paper platform for their diagnostic devices. From the site:

To fabricate a diagnostic device, DFA patterns channels and assay zones (or wells) of water-repellent materials into a piece of paper roughly the size of a postage stamp. Biological and chemical assay reagents are then deposited in the wells. When blood, urine, saliva, sweat or other biological samples are applied to the device, the paper wicks the sample through the channels to the assay zones, without external pumps or power. Upon contact, the assay zone quickly changes color and results are then easily read by comparing the color change with a reference scale printed on the device. After use, the device can be easily disposed of by burning. As we develop more advanced diagnostics, DFA's paper devices can be embedded with electrical circuitry to enable resistive heating, electrochemical assays, or initial processing of assay results.

And the reason this project—started in 2007 by Harvard's George Whitesides—is gaining attention now is because the company announced this week that it has just received a $100,000 Grand Challenges Explorations grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The grant is "designed to support a global health research project for the diagnosis of HIV in Third World countries."

Just the fact that this kind of hybrid biotech/non-profit company can exist and gain support from someone as influential and charitable as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation serves to remind the research community of the real importance of their work—saving lives.

Researchers at Harvard's SEAS have put together a new chip with some pretty fantastic measurement and detection capabilities.

The platform combines a high throughput microfluidic device with 62 high powered lenses to create a new kind of optical lab-on-a-chip device.

The researchers—including Dr. Crozier and Ethan Schonbrun a graduate student at SEAS—claim that the whole system has the sensitivity of a large microscope, describing it as a "massively parallel approach." On top of that, the device can test up to 200,000 drops per second... and Dr. Crozier hopes to be able to push that further.

The team is optimistic that the device could enhance microfluidic and lab-on-chip devices for use in applications such as in-the-field biological assays.

The work is described in full in Lab on a Chip (Issue 5, 2010).

Using lab-on-a-chip technology for DNA detection and analysis is one specific goal many researchers are inching toward. Researchers have now offered a way to align DNA strands to allow for analysis within a nanofluidic channel. The difficulty and cost of creating nanochannels is an impediment, but new research, published in Biomicrofluidics, offers the use a cost-effective material that could garner long term results in DNA analysis.

Nanochannels offer a way to align and analyze long biopolymer molecules such as DNA with high precision at potentially single basepair resolution. In the article "Complementary metal oxide semiconductor compatible fabrication and characterization of parylene-C covered nanofluidic channels with integrated nanoelectrodes," published today in Biomicrofluidics, Chih-kuan Tung, Robert Riehn, and Robert H. Austin, present a novel method of fabricating nanochannels with parylene, while measuring impedance characteristics with 25 nanometer thick electrodes. Parylene-C is a cheap and robust material, which is typically used for coating printed circuit boards as well as stents, defibrillators, pacemakers, and other implanted medical devices.

The researchers believe that this technology will open up opportunities for electronic detection of charged polymers, and that "with techniques to fabricate nanoelectrodes with nanochannels, it should be possible to include integrated electronics with nanofludics, allowing the electronic observation of a single DNA molecule at high spatial resolution."

In an earlier entry (Tiny Bubbles), I mentioned the idea of creating logical circuits by using nanoliter droplets through a microchannel. Microfluidics and circuits use similar terminology; notably "active" and "passive." An active electronic circuit draws power (usually for an operational amplifier) to shape a signal, whereas the passive circuit can be used without a power source. The advantages of the passive unit are low cost, zero power consumption, and long-term stability. Active components efficiently shape a signal, but at a cost of requiring a power supply.

Turning back to microfluidic devices; passive components have much the same advantages as passive circuitry: easy and cheap to fabricate and maintain, and more reliable and consistent performance. Because they're cheaper to produce, the possibility of a disposable lab-on-a-chip, or μTAS (Micro-Total Analysis Systems), device is more feasible.

More specifically, the passive microvalve has proven a valuable little invention. These valves can be as simple as a rubber flap (loosely speaking), but one chip could contain thousands. In addition to valves, passive versions of micropumps, -mixers, -dispensers, and -filters are used in increasingly complex microfluidic devices.

The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them. —William Bragg

I think Bragg would be excited about these types of biomicrofluidic advances. Delving further into the circuit/microdevice analogy seems worthwhile, considering the wealth of devices that are based on complex arrangements of simple circuits. How will scientists stretch this comparison further?

Will these passive components be responsible for a future torrent of advancement in the field of disease detection in third world countries? I would imagine that they will and more. There'll be an increasing number of advances in micro- and nanomechanical sensors for environmental, chemical, and biological detection as well. In addition to giving scientists new avenues for detection, the device opens up all sorts of opportunities for epidemiologists to study how a certain strain of a disease moves through a population or how a chemical spill spreads throughout a region, for example.