Rapid Determination of Homocysteine by Microchip CE-PAD

描述(申请人提供)：心血管疾病是美国和西方世界大部分地区的头号杀手。这种疾病的治疗每年花费数十亿美元，而且成本继续呈指数级增长。在改善将人们置于危险中的行为模式方面已经取得了许多进展，但仍然需要开发方法来在尽可能早的阶段发现疾病发作。早期检测需要测量与临床相关的疾病生物标志物。其中一个可以测量的标记物是同型半胱氨酸。同型半胱氨酸是一种参与蛋氨酸生物合成的氨基酸，在许多研究中已在临床上与心血管疾病有关。现有的同型半胱氨酸测定方法需要昂贵的仪器，耗时长，而且只能在临床实验室进行。先进的微型实验室，LLC正在开发用于快速检测疾病生物标志物的微流控技术，这种技术将是廉价的(仪器1000美元，每次检测5美元)，并且需要非常少的样本(1-5微升)。在目前的项目中，我们建议开发一种从全血样本开始的同型半胱氨酸检测方法。我们的技术平台将电化学检测与微芯片电泳相结合，以提供所需的低成本、高便携性特征。在这个项目中，我们将利用这项技术开发一种同时测定总同型半胱氨酸和蛋白结合同型半胱氨酸的方法。此外，我们还将开发第二种微流控设备，使我们能够从全血中分离细胞，这是进行准确测量所必需的。该项目的结果将是同型半胱氨酸测定的新技术以及连续产生用于分析的无细胞介质。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Cardiovascular disease is the number 1 killer in the United States and much of the Western world. Treatment of the disease costs billions of dollars each year and the costs continue to rise exponentially. Many strides have been made toward improving behavioral patterns that put people at risk, however there is still a need to develop methods to detect disease onset at the earliest possible stage. Early detection requires the measurement of a clinically relevant disease biomarker. One such marker that can be measured is homocysteine. Homocyteine is an amino acid involved in the biosynthesis of methionine and has been clinically linked to cardiovascular disease in a number of studies. Existing methods for measurement of homocysteine require expensive instrumentation, are time consuming, and can only be performed in a clinical laboratory. Advanced Microlabs, LLC is developing microfluidic technology for rapid detection of disease biomarkers that will be inexpensive ($1000 instrument, $5/assay) and require very small samples (1-5 microliters). In the current project, we propose to develop an assay for homocysteine starting from whole blood samples. Our technology platform couples electrochemical detection to microchip electrophoresis to provide the desired low-cost, high portability characteristics. During this project, we wiill develop an assay for both total homocysteine and protein-bound homocysteine using this technology. In addition, we will also develop a second microfluidic device that will allow us to isolate cells from whole blood, a requirement for making accurate measurements. The result of this project will be new techology for the measurement of homocysteine as well as continuous generation of cell free media for analysis.