Microfluidics and Nanotechnology for Detection of Global Infectious Diseases

Abstract

| Infectious diseases remain among the world's leading causes of mortality and years of life lost. Significant attention has been paid to the ''Big Three'' infectious pathogensVhuman immunodeficiency virus (HIV), malaria, and tuberculosis (TB)Vbut other conditions such as Chagas' disease, dengue, Ebola, and typhoid, as well as multipathogen processes such as viral hepatitis, pneumonia, and diarrhea, also have major global impact. Addressing these significant disease burdens, which disproportionately impact the world's poorest regions, is a multifaceted grand challenge, requiring new solutions and new technologies. Diagnostics enabled by advances in microfluidics and nanotechnologies can be an important part of the solution. Advantages such as smaller sample size, increased sensitivity, and new multiplexed sensing modalities in a point-of-care format can allow rapid dissemination of test results in remote and resource-limited regions. In this review, we provide a critical assessment of the state-of-the-art in use of these technologies for detection of HIV, malaria, and TB.In addition to discussing opportunities and future prospects, we also discuss the need for additional governmental and nongovernmental funding sources to develop these technologies to their fullest potential, and the need for new business models to enable their commercialization and deployment.

Advancing prevention of sexually transmitted infections through point-of-care testing: target product profiles and landscape analysis

“…The development of techniques that permit microscale fabrication and processing methods using silicon and the advances in plastics engineering can facilitate mass-produced, low-cost, ultraportable instrumentation with sophisticated sample and information processing capabilities that can be used effectively in diagnostics for use at the POC 42. Some of these are discussed below.…”

Derivation and Numerical Verification of a Compact Analytical Model for the AC Admittance Response of Nanoelectrodes, Suitable for the Analysis and Optimization of Impedance Biosensors

“…N ANOELECTRONIC biosensors have gained considerable importance in recent years because they can offer labelfree detection, high parallelism, high sensitivity, integrability with low cost CMOS technologies (see [1]- [4] and references therein). Consequently, modeling and simulation of nanoelectronic biosensors has emerged as a new field of research [5] to provide a deeper understanding of biosensor operation, insight in experimental results and new simulation tools for biosensor design and optimization.…”

Smartphone-Imaged HIV-1 Reverse-Transcription Loop-Mediated Isothermal Amplification (RT-LAMP) on a Chip from Whole Blood

“…However, because the threshold time is identical when comparing purified RNA and whole blood, we can conclude that whole blood does not affect the amplification efficiency. This is a very promising development, given that a major challenge to most point-of-care diagnostics is the process of isolating analyte from complex biological samples in the absence of controlled environments, skilled technicians, or laboratory instruments [ 25 ]. In this case, blood cell lysis is an extremely simple processing step compared to the more complicated techniques described in the literature [ 6 ].…”