Target inhibitors are used for melanoma treatment, and their effectiveness depends on the tumor genotype. We developed a diagnostic biochip for the detection of 39 clinically relevant somatic mutations in the BRAF, NRAS, KIT, GNAQ, GNA11, MAP2K1 and MAP2K2 genes. We used multiplex locked nucleic acid (LNA) PCR clamp for the preferable amplification of mutated over wild type DNA. The amplified f...

Introduction The theme of the Fifth Annual Lab-ona-Chip Conference from Cambridge Healthtech Institute (CHI) was discovery and new developments in biochip technologies as well as their applications relevant to human health, such as molecular diagnostics. Biochip is used as a broad term for various technologies including lab-on-a-chip, DNA chip, protein chip, microarrays and nanoarrays. The atte...

The utilization of microfluidic "lab-on-a-chip" devices in fundamental medical research, drug discovery and clinical diagnostics has rapidly increased in the past decade. Lab-on-a-chip devices process small volumes of analytes and reagents through on-chip microfluidic signal processing circuits. This paper discusses the implementation of a basic microfluidic circuit block, the concentration dig...

We report three novel demonstrations: 1. Coplanar electrowetting 2. Electrowetting on a printed circuit board (PCB) and 3. Transport and mixing in an “open” microfluidic substrate. Similar to “soft” lithography which enabled many researchers to easily prototype and experiment with continuous-flow microfluidics, this work allows researchers to easily experiment with discrete-flow microfluidics (...

This paper reports a novel method to integrate pressure sensors with analog and digital circuitry functions into microfluidic systems based on ionic liquid (IL) electrofluidic circuits. The developed pressure sensors possess electrical readout and can be seamlessly embedded into the microfluidic systems. The entire device is fabricated using an elastomeric material, polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS),...

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to demonstrate that digital polymerase chain reaction (PCR) enables rapid, allele independent molecular detection of fetal aneuploidy. STUDY DESIGN Twenty-four amniocentesis and 16 chorionic villus samples were used for microfluidic digital PCR analysis. Three thousand and sixty PCR reactions were performed for each of the target chromosomes (X, Y, 13, ...

In digital microfluidic systems, analyte droplets (volume typically á1μl) are transported on a planar electrode array by dielectrophoretic and electrowetting effects. While recent work has demonstrated feasibility mainly with single droplets on small arrays, these systems hold promise for commercial-scale applications by simultaneously moving many droplets on large arrays. This paper introduces...

A completely numerical method, named digital self-referencing holography, is described to easily accomplish a quantitative phase microscopy for microfluidic devices by a digital holographic microscope. The approach works through an appropriate numerical manipulation of the retrieved complex wavefront. The self-referencing is obtained by folding the retrieved wavefront in the image plane. The fo...