Blood Cell Count Performed at Bedside with Innovative Biochip

There is a great need for an automated, portable point-of-care blood cell counter that could yield results in a matter of minutes from a drop of blood without any trained professionals to operate the instrument.

Expensive hematology analyzers are currently used as a gold standard for acquiring complete blood cell counts (CBCs) and for nearly all CBCs performed today, the patient must travel to either a hospital with a large laboratory or to a centralized laboratory testing facility.

Scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC; Champaign, IL, USA) developed microfluidic biochips capable of a partial CBC using only a drop of whole blood. Total leukocyte and their 3-part differential count are obtained from 10 mL of blood after on-chip lysing of the red blood cells (RBCs) and counting of the leukocytes electrically using microfabricated platinum electrodes. For RBCs and platelets, one mL of whole blood is diluted with phosphate buffered saline (PBS) on-chip and the cells are counted electrically. The total time for measurement is under 20 minutes.

The team is already developing a portable prototype of the cell counter. The base unit of the reader will likely be hand-held and will take cartridges about the size of a credit card. They estimate the cost of a test will be around USD 10 instead of the USD 100 that a current test costs. The technology is scalable and the team also plans to investigate using it in other areas, such as animal diagnostics, blood transfusion analysis, and blood cell counting for managing chemotherapy treatments.

Umer Hassan, PhD, the first author of the study and an expert in bioelectronics, said, “There is huge potential for commercializing the technology and the translation of our technology will result in minimal to no experience requirement for device operation. Even, patients can perform the test at the comfort of their home and share the results with their primary care physicians via electronic means too.” The study was published on December 11, 2015, in the journal Technology.

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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign