I-Corps: Development of Integrated Optofluidic ELISA Biosensor Plates

该研究小组最近展示了集成的光流体酶联免疫吸附测定（ELISA）技术，可以大大提高ELISA的性能。拟议的项目将侧重于进一步开发光流控ELISA技术。集成的光流体装置是由96个流通多孔毛细管组成的塑料模块，其提高了分析物捕获效率/速率和信噪比。目前，它能够通过仅使用5微升样品/试剂在仅55分钟内检测1 pg/mL的分析物，这在检测限、检测时间和样品/试剂消耗方面分别比传统ELISA提高了4倍、8倍和20倍。随着开发工作的继续，预计灵敏度和分析速度将进一步提高10倍。值得注意的是，光流体ELISA装置与现有的ELISA读取器完全兼容，而不需要修改。所提出的设备有可能更快，更灵敏，更具成本效益。因此，它可以取代目前使用的设备。所提出的ELISA装置在用于生物医学时具有社会影响。由于其快速分析，它可以在急诊室中使用，以提供时间关键的信息来挽救生命。高灵敏度使得能够对患者进行早期诊断、疾病预后和治疗监测。最后，试剂体积的显著减少直接转化为医疗成本的75%以上的节省。该设备也有利于工业和研究实验室。它加快了测试周转时间，降低了研发成本，并有助于识别极高浓度的分子。

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.