Methods for blood preparation and analysis at the point-of-care using paper-based devices

Presenter: Professor Charles Mace (Tufts University, Department of Chemistry)

A single fingerstick of blood holds a wealth of information on the health of a patient. Comprehensive health screens require the detection, quantification, and analysis of solutes in purified liquid plasma or within cells, while also necessitating intact blood cells to determine absolute and relative counts. In order to access each group of desired species, substantial processing of blood is required prior to performing a measurement: separation of plasma from cells, differential lysis, chemical transformation, and enrichment or depletion, among other steps. In well-equipped laboratories with access to centrifuges, liquid handling equipment, and automated analyzers, these processes are trivial. At the point-of-care, however, resources are greatly limited and this expensive instrumentation is generally unavailable. As a result, blood processing may impractical or impossible. Thus, the types of tests that can be performed and the extent of healthcare information that can be provided are correspondingly limited. In response to this outstanding challenge in global healthcare, we have created a series of low-cost paper-based microfluidic devices that can be applied to controlling, processing, and analyzing blood at the point-of-care. We will discuss design considerations to perform blood-processing operations directly within paper devices and without assistance from any external equipment, and a number of applications of point-of-care blood analysis.