Low cost portable flow cytometry (R21/R33)

该项目的目标是开发低成本的便携式流式细胞仪用于生物医学应用。这些工具将在许多领域产生巨大影响，包括医学（艾滋病毒和癌症诊断）， 国土防御（生物点检测、生物监视和法医分析）和一般生物医学研究（配体-受体研究、分子组装分析、高通量筛选和 基因分型）。许多强大的应用使流式细胞仪成为几乎每个大学，医学院，制药公司和诊断实验室的固定设备。然而，规模、费用和要求 因为大量的消耗品限制了它们在正式实验室环境中的使用。低成本便携式流式细胞仪将使所有临床医生和研究人员都可以使用这些应用，这将对世界健康和研究产生重大影响。为了开发这样的仪器，我们将开发（在R21阶段）技术，允许粒子聚焦，而不使用鞘液。鞘液的消除将导致仪器的便携性增加，并且还减少消耗品需求。我们的新技术将使无鞘便携式流式细胞仪达到传统的颗粒分析速率，同时使用传统流式细胞仪的一小部分功率和耗材。我们还将开发低功率激励/检测系统 (R21阶段），其将不需要广泛的温度调节来实现光学测量稳定性。这种系统将显著地减小流式细胞仪的尺寸、成本和功率要求。最后，我们将把上述技术集成到一个小型的、价格合理的流式细胞仪中，该流式细胞仪具有先进的样品处理能力，大大降低了耗材和功率要求（R33 阶段）。为此，我们将联合收割机将上述技术结合到微型流式细胞仪核心中，该核心可以轻松与样本处理和光学模块连接。我们还将开发一个微型低 功率数据采集系统，以实现完整的微型低功率流式细胞仪的组装。我们将使用定量流式细胞术技术验证仪器性能。

The goal of this project is to develop low cost portable flow cytometers for use in biomedical applications. Such instruments would have a large impact in many areas including medicine (HIV and cancer diagnosis), homeland defense (biological point detection, bio-surveillance, and forensic analysis) and general biomedical research (ligand-receptor studies, molecular assembly analysis, high throughput screening and genotyping). The many powerful applications have made flow cytometers a fixture in nearly every university, medical school, pharmaceutical company, and diagnostic lab. However, the size, expense and requirement for large amounts of consumables have limited their use to formal laboratory settings. A low cost portable flow cytometer would make these applications available to all clinicians and researchers, which would have a great impact on world health and research. To develop such an instrument we will develop (in the R21 phase) technologies that allow particle focusing without the use of sheath fluid. The elimination of sheath fluid will result in increased portability of the instrument and also reduce consumable requirements. Our novel technology will allow a sheathless portable flow cytometer to achieve conventional particle analysis rates, while using a fraction of the power andconsumables of a conventional flow cytometer. We will also develop low power excitation/detection systems (R21 phase) that will not require extensive thermoregulation to achieve optical measurement stability. Suchsystems, will significantly reduce the size, cost and power requirements of a flow cytometer. Finally, we will integrate the above technologies into a miniature affordable flow cytometer, with advanced sample handling capabilities that has significantly reduced consumable and power requirements (R33 phase). To do this we will combine the above technologies into a microfabricated flow cytometer core that can easily be interfaced with sample handling and optical modules. We will also develop a miniature low power data acquisition system to enable assembly of a complete miniature low power flow cytometer. We will validate instrument performance using quantitative flow cytometry techniques.