A Portable Microfluidic System for Point-of-Care Detection of Multiple Protein Biomarkers

Abstract

Protein biomarkers are indicators of many diseases and are commonly used for disease diagnosis and prognosis prediction in the clinic. The urgent need for point-of-care (POC) detection of protein biomarkers has promoted the development of automated and fully sealed immunoassay platforms. In this study, a portable microfluidic system was established for the POC detection of multiple protein biomarkers by combining a protein microarray for a multiplex immunoassay and a microfluidic cassette for reagent storage and liquid manipulation. The entire procedure for the immunoassay was automatically conducted, which included the antibody–antigen reaction, washing and detection. Alpha-fetoprotein (AFP), carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) and carcinoma antigen 125 (CA125) were simultaneously detected in this system within 40 min with limits of detection of 0.303 ng/mL, 1.870 ng/mL, and 18.617 U/mL, respectively. Five clinical samples were collected and tested, and the results show good correlations compared to those measured by the commercial instrument in the hospital. The immunoassay cassette system can function as a versatile platform for the rapid and sensitive multiplexed detection of biomarkers; therefore, it has great potential for POC diagnostics.

Diagnostic Accuracy of Liquid Biomarkers in Airway Diseases: Toward Point-of-Care Applications

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Editorial for the Special Issue on Micro/Nanofluidic and Lab-on-a-Chip Devices for Biomedical Applications

“…Other authors have focused on the use of microfluidic devices for detection purposes. Li et al [ 10 ] designed an ease-of-use portable microfluidic device that combines microarray and microfluidics for point-of-care detection of several protein biomarkers in serum samples. The results were promising and showed similar outputs to those measured by the commercial method used at the clinic.…”