A Novel Microfluidic Device for Blood Plasma Filtration

Abstract

The use of whole blood and some biological specimens, such as urine, saliva, and seminal fluid are limited in clinical laboratory analysis due to the interference of proteins with other small molecules in the matrix and blood cells with optical detection methods. Previously, we developed a microfluidic device featuring an electrokinetic size and mobility trap (SMT) for on-chip extract, concentrate, and separate small molecules from a biological sample like whole blood. The device was used to on-chip filtrate the whole blood from the blood cells and plasma proteins and then on-chip extract and separate the aminoglycoside antibiotic drugs within 3 min. Herein, a novel microfluidic device featuring a nano-junction similar to those reported in the previous work formed by dielectric breakdown was developed for on-chip filtration and out-chip collection of blood plasma with a high extraction yield of 62% within less than 5 min. The filtered plasma was analyzed using our previous device to show the ability of this new device to remove blood cells and plasma proteins. The filtration device shows a high yield of plasma allowing it to detect a low concentration of analytes from the whole blood.

Editorial for the Special Issue on Micro/Nano Devices for Blood Analysis, Volume II

“…The authors achieved the on-chip filtration and out-chip collection of blood plasma from a whole blood sample, with a high extraction yield of 62%, within less than 5 min. The authors characterized the filtered plasma, showing that it presented a low concentration of analytes from the whole blood, confirming the success of the proposed microdevice [5].…”

“…Al-aqbi et al [5] also developed novel microfluidic devices for blood applications. The authors proposed a new geometry for blood plasma filtration based on a nanojunction formed by dielectric breakdown.…”

Enhancement of dielectrophoresis‐based particle collection from high conducting fluids due to partial electrode insulation

“…Instead of using the physical size and buoyant density of the EVs to separate them from plasma, it can be advantageous to leverage the high contrast between dielectric properties of the particles and the surrounding media through the application of dielectrophoresis (DEP) [10,11,[13][14][15][16][17][18]. DEP has been used successfully for many applications including the isolation and recovery of circulating tumor cells [2,15,19,20]. DEP is a label-free separation method that does not require specific biomarkers to be present on EVs for capture.…”

Numerical Study on High Throughput and High Solid Particle Separation in Deterministic Lateral Displacement Microarrays

“…To this end, various particle separation processes have been developed which exploit continuous flow phenomena. A distinction can be made between passive and active fractionation mechanisms: active fractionation mechanisms involve external forces in the fractionation process; whereas, passive fractionation mechanisms do not require external forces and rely solely on the interactions between particles, flow and channel geometry, allowing for a more compact design and simpler operation [1,2]. Active microfluidic particle/cell sorting and manipulation methods include acoustophoresis, magnetophoresis, optical sorting and electrical separation techniques such as electrophoresis, electroosmosis and dielectrophoresis [3][4][5].…”

“…± 0.03%1 3.59 ± 0.03% 1 7.19 ± 0.01% 1 10.82 ± 0.01% 12.0 µm 2.5 µm 3.0 µm 3.5 µm 4.0 µm 4.5 µm 5.0 µm 0.1 15 µm 10 µm 1 Averaged volume fractions immediately after particle generation in the central third of the simulation domain.…”