Microfluidics brings unique opportunities for engineering micro-/nanomaterials with wellcontrolled physicochemical properties. Herein, using a miniaturized multi-run spiral-shaped microreactor, we develop a flow synthesis strategy to continuously produce hollow spherical silica (HSS) with hierarchical sponge-like pore sizes ranging from several nanometers to over one hundred nanometers. The formation of HSS is realized by mixing two reactant flows, one containing cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) and diluted ammonia and the other 1,3,5trimethylbenzene (TMB) and diluted tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS), at a flow rate as high as 5 mL/min. The effect of the reactant concentration and the flow rate on the structural change of the resultant materials is examined. Functional small-sized nanoparticles (magnetic nanoparticle, quantum dot, and silver nanoparticle) can be separately assembled into HSS and high molecular weight protein (bovine serum albumin) can be successfully loaded into HSS and delivered into cancer cells afterward, making them promising in the fields of separation and purification, bioimaging, catalysis, and theranostics.
Objectives
Increase the yield and purity of cell‐free DNA (cfDNA) extracted from plasma for non‐invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) as inefficiencies in this extraction and purification can dramatically affect the sensitivity and specificity of the test.
Methods
This work integrates cfDNA extraction from plasma with a microfluidic chip platform by combining magnetic bead‐based extraction and electroosmotic flow on the microfluidic chip. Various wash buffers and voltage conditions were simulated using COMSOL Multiphysics Modeling and tested experimentally.
Results
When performing the first wash step of this assay on the microfluidic chip with 300 V applied across the channel there was a six‐fold increase in the A260/A230 ratio showing a significant improvement (p value 0.0005) in the purity of the extracted sample all while maintaining a yield of 68.19%. These values are critical as a high yield results in more sample to analyze and an increase in A260/A230 ratio corresponds to a decrease in salt contaminants such as guanidinium thiocyanate which can interfere with downstream processes during DNA library preparation and potentially hinder the NIPT screening results.
Conclusions
This technique has the potential to improve NIPT outcomes and other clinically relevant workflows that use cfDNA as an analyte such as cancer detection.
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