A lab‐on‐disc centrifugal microfluidic system for ultraprecise plasma separation

Abstract

As the medical community puts forward higher requirements for the speed and convenience of disease diagnosis, point-of-care testing has become a hot research topic to overcome various kinds of healthcare problems. Blood test is considered to be highly sensitive and accurate in clinical diagnosis. However, conventional plasma separation system tends to be bulky and needs professional operations. Moreover, imprecise separation may cause residual biochemical substances such as blood cells to affect the detection results. In this work, to solve these problems, we designed a portable centrifugal microfluidic platform for automatic, rapid and ultraprecise blood separation. The disc consists of multichambers and multi-microchannels where a plasma reservoir and a cell reservoir are connected to each other and collinear with the center of the circle. This structure overcomes the weakness of low separation efficiency (when hematocrit increases) under the traditional blood separation structure (bifurcation structure). As a result, the proposed system achieved 99.9% plasma purity, 99.9% separation efficiency (with a blood hematocrit of 48%) and 32.5% plasma recovery rate in the 50s, which provides a strong guarantee for rapid blood diagnosis and analysis, especially in areas where medical resources are limited.

Emerging Microfluidic Devices for Sample Preparation of Undiluted Whole Blood to Enable the Detection of Biomarkers

“…11,82 Newer iterations can separate undiluted whole blood at higher hematocrit levels with minimal hemolysis and RBC leakage and have shown improved yield, plasma/serum purity, and retention of biomarker integrity. 83,84 Zhu et al took it a step further to develop a sample-to-answer centrifugal microfluidic platform (Figure 4D) that combined plasma separation and the multiplexed detection of biomarkers in finger prick samples. 85 This is a POC biochemical analyzer that was designed to facilitate self-served health monitoring for chronic illnesses.…”

“…Centrifugal microfluidics operate on the principle of centrifugal forces to separate, mix, or perform reactions within a disk-shaped chip coupled with a centrifuge platform . First created in 2007, these chips are often used for quick and effective plasma separation in RLS. , Newer iterations can separate undiluted whole blood at higher hematocrit levels with minimal hemolysis and RBC leakage and have shown improved yield, plasma/serum purity, and retention of biomarker integrity. , Zhu et al took it a step further to develop a sample-to-answer centrifugal microfluidic platform (Figure D) that combined plasma separation and the multiplexed detection of biomarkers in finger prick samples . This is a POC biochemical analyzer that was designed to facilitate self-served health monitoring for chronic illnesses .…”

“…Li et al developed a sample-to-answer centrifugal microfluidic platform for the detection of HBV DNA in whole blood samples (Figure E). , This intricate apparatus consists of a disposable microfluidic disk with numerous chambers for sample processing and a modified turntable capable of running rotary speed programs, thermocycling, and fluorescence detection. Every preparation step is automatic, except for sample loading, making it a true sample-to-answer device capable of producing results in 48 min.…”

Extremely Precise Blood–Plasma Separation from Whole Blood on a Centrifugal Microfluidic Disk (Lab-on-a-Disk) Using Separator Gel

“…In 2021, Shi et al designed a centrifugal microfluidic disk. The disk possessed multi chambers and multi microchannels such that the plasma chamber and blood chamber were collinear with the center of the disk [ 9 ]. It is important to mention that since the concentration of some components in the blood plasma is so low, such as cfDNA, maximum plasma separation is usually required.…”

“…It is important to mention that since the concentration of some components in the blood plasma is so low, such as cfDNA, maximum plasma separation is usually required. Therefore, researchers have been working on microfluidic devices to address this issue [ 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 ].…”