Thermo-Optical Detection with Interferometric Microchips

描述（由申请人提供）：常规临床分析利用平板凝胶和毛细管电泳（CE）分离和检测感兴趣的组分，最显著的是蛋白质和DNA。最近，小型化CE方法，使用微芯片，带来了提高速度，减少样品和试剂的使用，和平行分析，允许高通量筛选，大大降低成本的优点。这还没有转化为许多物种的快速临床诊断，因为吸收检测还不容易转移到小型化的格式。Luna Innovations和弗吉尼亚大学提议开发一种集成了基于微芯片的分离的热光吸收检测系统。所提出的系统将利用远程超灵敏局部温度测量沿着分布在微芯片内的样品，以确定浓度。这种检测系统将为微芯片电泳分离开辟许多重要的临床应用。对于第一阶段计划，Luna团队将重点展示用于检测尿液样本中氨基酸的系统。某些氨基酸的水平升高指示各种疾病状态，包括先天性代谢紊乱、肾功能紊乱、糖尿病、糖尿病和糖尿病。 运输障碍或肝功能障碍微芯片电泳方法的发展，用于快速，廉价地检测和定量尿液中的氨基酸浓度，可以加快诊断速度，大大简化这些疾病状态的监测。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Conventional clinical analyses utilize slab gel and capillary electrophoresis (CE) to separate and detect components of interest, most notably proteins and DNA. Recently, miniaturized CE methods, using microchips, has brought the advantages of increased speed, reduced sample and reagent usage, and parallel analyses, allowing high throughput screening at greatly reduced costs. This has not translated into rapid clinical diagnostics for many species because absorption detection has not been easily transferable to the miniaturized formats. Luna Innovations and the University of Virginia propose to develop a thermo-optical absorbance detection system integrated with microchip-based separations. The proposed system will utilize remote ultrasensitive localized temperature measurement along the distributed sample within the microchip to determine concentration. This detection system will open up a number of important clinical applications for microchip electrophoretic separations. For the Phase I program, the Luna team will focus on demonstrating the system for the detection of amino acids in urine samples. Elevated levels of certain amino acids are indicative of various disease states, including inborn metabolic disorders, renal transport disorders, or liver malfunction. The development of a microchip electrophoresis method, for rapidly and inexpensively detecting and quantifying amino acid concentrations in urine, could speed diagnosis and greatly simplify monitoring of these disease states.