I-Corps: Development of Integrated Optofluidic ELISA Biosensor Plates

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This research team has recently demonstrated integrated optofluidic enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) technology that can tremendously improve the ELISA performance. The proposed project will be focused on the effort to further develop the optofluidic ELISA technology. The integrated optofluidic device is a plastic module that consists of 96 flow-through multi-hole capillaries, which improves the analyte capture efficiency/rate and the signal-to-noise ratio. Currently, it is capable of detecting 1 pg/mL of analytes in only 55 minutes by using only 5 micro-liter sample/reagents, which is already 4-fold, 8-fold, and 20-fold improvement in detection limit, detection time, and sample/reagent consumption, respectively, over the traditional ELISA. Additional 10-fold improvement in sensitivity and analysis speed is expected as the development efforts continue. Significantly, the optofluidic ELISA device is fully compatible with the existing ELISA readers without the need of modification. The proposed device has the potential to be faster, more sensitive, and more cost-effective. Therefore, it could replace the current devices in use. The proposed ELISA device has a societal impact when used in biomedicine. Due to its rapid analysis, it can be used in emergency rooms to provide time-critical information to save lives. The high sensitivity enables early-diagnosis, disease prognosis, and therapeutically monitoring of patients. Finally, significant reduction in reagent volumes translates directly to over 75% savings in healthcare costs. The device is also beneficial to industries and research labs. It expedites the testing turn-around time, cuts the research and development costs, and helps identify molecules at extremely concentrations.