CRII: SCH: A Smart Biosensor for Monitoring Cell Sickling in Patients with Sickle Cell Disease

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The objective of this research project is to develop a portable, smart biosensor for monitoring of abnormal blood activities in patients with sickle cell disease (SCD). Despite the advanced healthcare system in the US, life expectancy of SCD patients is limited to about 50 years and patients suffer from unpredictable pain crises. Vascular occlusion is the primary cause of various clinical complications and shortened lifespan. The developed method will provide rapid blood testing in a minimally-invasive manner. Specifically, a quantitative measurement of cell sickling that is a primary contributing factor of vascular occlusion will be made. This project will open up new opportunities to gather large quantities of longitudinal cell sickling data to be associated with clinical outcomes and to help establish criteria for prediction of pain crises in individual SCD patients. Alerts will be raised when the measured cell sickling level is higher than the patient's "normal" range, allowing quicker interventions to prevent further complications and pain crises. This effort can potentially revolutionize the diagnostics and personalized-management of SCD. The essential idea of the smart biosensor is to integrate a microfluidic impedance sensing module and a sensing interface module on a single portable device. The disposable sensing module consumes a single drop of blood, allowing in situ measurement of cell sickling induced by deoxygenated abnormal sickle hemoglobin. The integration of smart phone with the biosensor will provide flexible opportunities to SCD patients for long-term monitoring of abnormal blood activities outside hospital and laboratory. To accomplish this goal, the PI will focus on the following research objectives: (a) Integrate a microelectrode impedance transducer into a microfluidic hypoxia channel that mimics in vivo hypoxia-induced cell sickling conditions; determine the accuracy and sensitivity of electrical impedance as a sensing signal of cell sickling; (b) Functionalize the microfluidic channel with oxidoreductase agent to miniaturize the hypoxia control unit as well as to accelerate the cell sickling rate; (c) Establish communication between the microfluidic impedance sensing module and a smartphone through Bluetooth technology for analysis and display of results. This research will be the first attempt to electrically measure cell sickling events triggered by on-chip hypoxia in a portable device. This project makes contributions to the fields of biosensing, hematopathology, and healthcare monitoring.