Micro-a-fluidics ELISA for Rapid CD4 Cell Count at the Point-of-Care

• DOI: 10.1038/srep03796
• Publication Date: 2014-01-22T13:01:06Z
• Authors: ShuQi Wang; Savas Tasoglu; Paul Z. Chen; Michael Chen; Ragip Akbas; Sonya Wach; Cenk Ibrahim Ozdemir; Umut Atakan Gurkan; Francoise F. Giguel; Daniel R. Kuritzkes; Utkan Demirci
• Keywords: CD4-Positive T-Lymphocytes; 0301 basic medicine; 9. Industry and infrastructure; Point-of-Care Systems; Microfluidics; Laboratory techniques and procedures; 610; Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay; HIV Infections; Translational research; Viral Load; Flow Cytometry; Article; 620; CD4 Lymphocyte Count; 3. Good health; 03 medical and health sciences; HIV-1; Humans; Cell Phone

HIV has become one of the most devastating pathogens in human history. Despite fast progress in HIV-related basic research, antiretroviral therapy (ART) remains the most effective method to save AIDS patients' lives. Unfortunately, ART cannot be universally accessed, especially in developing countries, due to the lack of effective treatment monitoring diagnostics. Here, we present an inexpensive, rapid and portable micro-a-fluidic platform, which can streamline the process of an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) in a fully automated manner for CD4 cell count. The micro-a-fluidic CD4 cell count is achieved by eliminating operational fluid flow via "moving the substrate", as opposed to "flowing liquid" in traditional ELISA or microfluidic methods. This is the first demonstration of capturing and detecting cells from unprocessed whole blood using the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) in a microfluidic channel. Combined with cell phone imaging, the presented micro-a-fluidic ELISA platform holds great promise for offering rapid CD4 cell count to scale up much needed ART in resource-constrained settings. The developed system can be extended to multiple areas for ELISA-related assays.