Microfluidic Development Services for Immunoassay

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Based on our advanced microfluidic platforms and powerful technology, Creative Biolabs provides custom microfluidic chip development services to meet our customers’ different purposes, greatly improving the accuracy and sensitivity of the detection. Our highly skilled scientists are ready to get started on your projects.

Introduction of Immunoassay

Immunoassay is one of the most widely used biomedical diagnostic methods. It is based on the specific binding of an antibody to an antigen. Immunoassays are used to quantify proteins and small molecules in different fields such as medical diagnostics, proteomics, pharmaceutical research, and biological research. Automation of immunoassay tests generally requires a complex and cumbersome robotic technique for fluid handling, which is very expensive and not a practical tool for point-of-care testing. Thus, the rapid development of microfluidic-based immunoassay technology lights a pathway for diagnostics in recent years.

Microfluidic Chips Development for Immunoassay

Microfluidic chips have been developed to perform various immunoassays that can be employed to detect biological agents. Microfluidic immunoassays make use of a network of microchannels and/or immunoreactive chambers and allow integration of multiple liquid handling processes required in diagnostic assays, such as pumping, metering, sampling, dispensing, and sequential loading and washing. Overall, the microfluidic immunoassay platform is an emergent, powerful option for analyzing a wide variety of analytes in different fields (e.g., medical diagnosis, pharmaceutical, and biological research, food industry, and environmental applications).

In general, microfluidic immunoassay has two main formats:

Heterogeneous Microfluidic Immunoassay

In heterogeneous immunoassays, antibodies are either immobilized on the surface of the microfluidic chip or micron-dimension beads embedded in the device. The heterogeneous microfluidic immunoassay generally confers high sensitivity and excellent specificity.

Homogeneous Microfluidic Immunoassay

In homogeneous immunoassays, bound and unbound antibodies are mostly discriminated against by their electrophoretic ratio mobility in microchannels.

Fig. 1 Single-cell immunology analysis on microfluidic chip. Fig. 1 Microfluidic single-cell immunology analysis.^1,3

Microfluidic immunoassay can not only detect single-antigen but also can serve as a multivariate immunoassay based on different strategies, such as:

Multivariate Immunoassay Based on Surface Microarray

Surface microarray is one of the most common platforms used for multiplexed immunoassays. This platform relies on its reduced size to increase the number of analytes analyzed from a single sample, and microfluidic techniques could facilitate sample handling for these platforms.

Multivariate Immunoassay Based on Microbeads

Microbeads are frequently used in microfluidic immunoassays and serve as a simple mechanism to reproducibly deliver antibodies to desirable locations. Microbeads can be non-magnetic or magnetic, and different antibody-immobilization methods can be implemented.

Advantages of Microfluidic for Immunoassay

Fig 2 Microfluidic services for immunoassay. (Creative Biolabs Authorized)

Our Microfluidic Services for Immunoassay

Using microfluidic systems for immunoassay has become a popular solution. For over ten years, Creative Biolabs has been a leading supplier of custom microfluidic solutions to our partners worldwide. To meet the growing demand for microfluidic technology in immunoassay, we develop a suite of microfluidic services for immunoassay with high specificity, sensitivity, and reproducibility. Creative Biolabs is pleased to share our extensive expertise in microfluidic technology in facilitating our clients’ research and project development. If you do not find a specific service item you are looking for, please directly contact us. We can design and customize your project and generate the exact microfluidic chips you need.

Published Data

The findings discussed in the articles related to immunoassay on microfluidic chip are presented:

1. A rapid microfluidic device transformed from a conventional 96-well ELISA kit.

Fig. 2 Conceptual illustration of the microfluidic device Fig. 2 Conceptual diagram of the microfluidic device.^2,3

M. Jalal Uddin and colleagues have developed a fully integrated active microfluidic device that converts a conventional 96-well test kit into a point-of-care testing (POCT) system. This innovation enhances the efficacy of the traditional enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). The device includes a programmable disposable on-chip pump and valve that enable accurate control and activation of microfluidic reagents, leading to decreased reagent usage and reduced testing duration. It also incorporates the size of a 96-well plate, with each well represented on an affordable PDMS micro-column that is secured with a thermoplastic chip. The hexagonal openings in the column interact with the 96-well plate, creating a zone for the ELISA reaction, while the PDMS pump and valve linked to the thermoplastic chip introduce the sample and reagents into this reaction area for the ELISA process. To showcase the device's exceptional sensitivity and user-friendliness, the non-microfluidic device has effectively quantified 4.88 pg/mL of cardiac troponin I (cTnI) while requiring a minimum sample size of 30 µL, and the time needed for each ELISA step was minimized to 15 minutes.

References

Jammes, Maerki, et al. " How single-cell immunology is benefiting from microfluidic technologies." Microsyst Nanoeng 6 (2020): 45.
Uddin, M. Jalal, Nabil H. Bhuiyan, and Joon S. Shim. "Fully integrated rapid microfluidic device translated from conventional 96-well ELISA kit." Scientific Reports 11.1 (2021): 1986.
Distributed under Open Access license CC BY 4.0, without modification.

For Research Use Only. Not For Clinical Use.