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'Lab On a Chip' Made From Paper and Tape
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at Harvard University have developed a microfluidic device using ordinary paper and tape. Squares of paper are layered and connected with adhesive tape, channeling liquid horizontally and vertically in a very small area. Each square of paper has been treated with photoresist material, which creates channels that funnel liquid into tiny wells containing certain proteins or antibodies. The fluid interacts with that area of the paper and turns the well a certain color. It can, for example, detect varying concentrations of glucose. Lead researcher George Whitesides says such paper 'lab on a chip' tests may lead to a cost-effective, portable, and accurate method for diagnosing diseases in countries lacking reliable health care. The research appears in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science."
So they're the ones who have been stealing all the paper and tape from the supply cabinet!
Millions in grant money and this is what they come up with? Paper and tape?
Instead of regular tape, you could use duct tape.
In my experience, "ordinary paper" is generally not the same thing as "treated with photoresist material, which creates channels that funnel liquid into tiny wells containing certain proteins or antibodies."
I'd be willing to hazard a guess that it's not the paper or tape that will be making up the bulk of the testing device's price.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
A link to the actual article for those who are interested:
;)
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2008/12/08/0810903105.abstract
Although probably you need a login for full text. Looks interesting and quite promising for low cost production. I think this technology might not only be interesting for countries lacking reliable health care but also budget strapped labs
So that's where Macgyver went! I always new he could do better than the Phoenix foundation. I hear he's also developing a paperclip hypodermic.
"...such paper "lab on a chip" tests may lead to a cost-effective, portable, and accurate method for diagnosing diseases in countries lacking reliable health care."
How about a cost-effective, portable, and accurate method in countries where we're used to overpaying for the NON-cost-effective methods?
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
That's because it's an Alexander the Great detector!
meh
... microfluidic Shrinky-dinks! All you need is a laser printer, shrinky dinks, and a toaster oven. :-)
There's no place I can be, since I found Serenity.
If that doesn't do it, try WD-40.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Or your doctor could test your blood for know cancer proteins each time you go in to visit him. Or inspectors could analyze a water samples in real time in third world countries without the infrastructure to do the testing the normal way. Or any number of other things that that the technology could be used for.
The third world has been using test strips fine for the last n years. These 3D paper things don't seem to really be any easier to use or really cheaper to make.
Just because they're made from paper and tape does not mean they can be made in a mud hut. The critical part is treating the carrier with the reactants still requires a clean lab environment.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
. . . I briefly skimmed the article, and neither a "Mullet" nor a "Swiss Army Knife" was mentioned.
Those are the two of the critical ingredients in Macgyver Stew.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
So what. If people are being disappeared, the justification doesn't really matter.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Liability, due to bad jury decisions, is responsible for a big chunk of health care costs. So is the AMA, which controls the number of student positions available.
(Doctors *should* be held responsible for mistakes, but the current system doesn't do it right, there is not a reasonable relationship between the severity of the mistakes and the penalties imposed)
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
The major point here is that the current health care industry in this country is far from being a "free market". From the FDA to the AMA to all of the regulation and restrictions surrounding the operation of a hospital.
At this point, I'm not arguing that those are bad, but that they serve to create artificial shortages, socialize certain aspects of the industry, and create very high barriers to entry for some fields. The merits of this are open for discussion, but it certainly can't be considered a free market.
I wasn't justifying it. I also think its wrong, just inevitable.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Spinning resist on paper works well. However, as the paper is flexed (after deposition) the resist begins to crack. It might be better to use cardboard. Incidentally, this process would not have worked well in the past. Typical resist thickness was 0.2-2um. The roughness of paper is around 0.5-3um (depending on the paper). Now, many people are using thick resist (as molds for electoplating for example). These resist can be 10-20, 20-60, 40-80 micron and thicker. Some SU-8's can be 100-800um thick (a 4" wafer is 500um thick). I've also sputtered Chromium onto paper. Unfortunately, the layer wasn't thick enough to conduct (I just wanted to see if it would work). Also, you can use a sharpie maker en lieu of resist for a lift-off process. Semiconductor equipment + office supplies = fun stuff!
Probably McCoy gave them a visit.
paper and tape, that's all!
oh, and a bit of toxic light sensitive polymer that costs a few hundred dollars per liter and needs to be processed in a clean room...
Sarcasm aside, using paper to both drive the capillary action and do some basic separation in a microfluidic style device is a pretty neat idea. Sometimes researchers are so caught up in the cutting edge stuff that they forget the old methods which just work. Harvard professors aren't always turning to cheap pregnancy tests for inspiration. The photoresist could be replaced with some kind of ink and these things could be printed out pretty easily.
That isn't what I meant. If a cop can disappear you for not having papers, then a cop can take away your papers and then disappear you for not having papers. So if there is some reason that makes it okay for the cop to disappear people, all he has to do is use that reason, and he can disappear any people he wants.
More directly (but still obliquely...), fight the disease, not the symptoms.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Don't hold your breath. While the chip itself might be cheap to manufacture, its going to run into the same problems that have plagued immunochromatographic diagnostic technologies for years:
1. Antibodies are extremely expensive relative to other reagents that can be used (acid fast staining for mycobacteria, nucleic acid stains for plasmodia and other parasites, etc).
2. Its impossible to get a measure of the "confidence" of a measurement using this type of technology, so verifying results requires performing a completely different diagnostic test. But if you have no idea which tests gave confident results and which did not, how do you know which results to verify?
3. Cell-phone cameras are useless for quantitative analysis, especially ones that would need high dynamic range and high accuracy
4. Quality control and assurance is a bitch. Ask any epidemiologist that has experience working with malaria RDTs in the field. Some of them last 6 months, some last 1 month on the shelf.
5. In high-burden areas for certain diseases, using a disposable test methodology becomes extremely cost-ineffective.
While this might be interesting for things like simple urine tests or blood sugar tests, diagnosing infectious diseases represents a massive challenge for technologies like this. There's a reason we still use century-old microscopy-based technologies for diagnosing things like active TB and malaria even though they suck. I don't blame the researchers, they do good work and aren't focused on building a real product. Its the journalists that somehow make the leap between "we can detect glucose" and "revolutionary diagnostic technology."
And yes, IAABME.
I just spent my last mod point otherwise I'd help get that "Troll" mod off you. Whoever added that doesn't understand what a troll is apparently.
Instant DNA tests are just a tool like anything else. They can be used for good or for bad. Perhaps the Nazis 2.0 will use them in a quest of 'racial purity' and imprison or kill a lot of innocent people. Or perhaps they'll be used to perpetuate genocide in Africa and the ME when it is available to them.
At the same time who knows what kinds of medical advances will be able to take advantage of the information. Whole new possibilities are opening up and I find it exciting. Can't take the good without the bad nor vice versa. Hell, maybe one day after world war 3 (personally I think the politics of the world need a massive re-arrange for any of the following to be possible) we'll be able to use that while exploring new worlds on nuclear powered seeder vessels. Being able to figure out the dna/chemical make up of biologicals has been a staple of sci-fi, and the thing about sci-fi is every day more of it becomes reality.