Microfluidics + Electrochemistry: Bridging the Gap Between Sensitivity and Simplicity in Point-of-Care Diagnostics

The synergy between electrochemistry and microfluidics offers a powerful platform for analyzing analytes in small-volume samples. This presentation will discuss the integration of microfluidic devices with electrochemistry for high-sensitivity point-of-care (POC) diagnostics in biomedical applications. Current point-of-care (POC) diagnostics present a significant trade-off: devices are either user-friendly but lack sensitivity and provide only semi-quantitative results at best, or they offer sensitive quantitative results but are complex and require multiple steps. This dichotomy highlights the ongoing challenge in balancing ease of use with analytical performance in POC testing. Capillary flow-based microfluidic devices offer the ability to perform complex chemical analysis upon sample addition. When combined with sensitive, quantitative analytical methods like electrochemistry, they can provide easy to use, sensitive, quantitative POC diagnostic tools, solving this key problem. The first part of this talk will focus on developing a bead-based microfluidic assay to detect HIV p24 antigen as part of an on-going effort towards providing fast accurate diagnostic technologies for individuals on pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) therapies. The system uses capillary flow-based devices combined with magnetic beads to achieve pg/mL detection limits for p24. The second part of the talk will focus on improving the performance of electrodes in capillary flow microfluidic devices using laser-induced graphene (LIG). LIG electrodes are easy to make and give very high electrochemical performance, but it is difficult to transfer them into microfluidic devices. A new method for electrode transfer and application to detection of hemoglobin will be discussed.