Graduate Seminar Series: Molecular Stream – Jose Gilberto Camacho Valenzuela

Graduate Seminar Series: Molecular Stream
Graduate Seminar Series for the Institute of Biomedical Engineering (BME). This day is for molecular stream presenters.
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Presentation Title: Developing and miniaturizing Digital Microfluidic platforms for immunoassays
Abstract:
Capacity to test, track and monitor immune status against any antigen quantitatively is becoming more and more important for personalized medicine. Different types of detection technologies have been emerged and implemented.
Some of them (such as conventional ELISA) are highly sensitive but unfortunately, they lack of portability, requiring laboratory conditions to be operated. However, important effort has been done in order to move out the diagnostics from the lab, developing miniaturized portable technology such as Lateral Flow Assays, or another powerful platforms such as paper-based biosensors. They are not only portable, but also low cost and time-responses are incredibly fast (5-15 min) compared to conventional immunoassays.
However, sensitivity is something that needs to be improved in these technologies to be compared to the conventional immunoassays.
There are other technologies that have recently emerged such as Digital Microfluidics (DMF), which is a liquid-handling technology that can manipulate liquids in discrete droplets.
By applying an electrical potential individually on an electrode array, this not only allows us to move droplets in a fully controllable way, but also to split, dispense and merge them, giving us the capability to make an entire laboratory protocol within a Digital microfluidic chip in a fully automated way.
Hence, during my PhD, as Aim 1, I will be focused on the development of an ELISA immunoassay for COVID-19 immune response on a Digital Microfluidic platform.
As a second Aim, a miniaturized DMF platform for immunoassays will be implemented, towards a hand-held, low-cost device.
Supervisor Name: Aaron Wheeler
Year of Study: 2
Program of Study: PhD
Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89610372821?pwd=azd4SCtYVWtreVovaGNPV1c2NGY2Zz09
Meeting ID: 896 1037 2821
Password: 483329
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