Thermo-Optical Detection with Interferometric Microchips

描述(申请人提供)：传统的临床分析使用平板凝胶和毛细管电泳法(CE)来分离和检测感兴趣的成分，最明显的是蛋白质和DNA。最近，使用微芯片的小型化CE方法具有速度快、样品和试剂使用量少、并行分析等优点，可以在极大降低成本的情况下实现高通量筛选。这并没有转化为许多物种的快速临床诊断，因为吸收检测并不容易转移到小型化形式。露娜创新公司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的局部温度测量沿微芯片内分布的样品来确定浓度。该检测系统将为微芯片电泳分离开辟一系列重要的临床应用。在第一阶段的项目中，露娜团队将重点演示尿样中氨基酸检测系统。某些氨基酸水平的升高预示着各种疾病状态，包括先天代谢障碍、肾脏转运障碍或肝脏功能障碍。开发一种快速、廉价地检测和定量尿中氨基酸浓度的微芯片电泳法，可以加快诊断速度，并极大地简化对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.