Digital Microfluidic Platform to Maximize Diagnostic Tests with Low Sample Volumes from Newborns and Pediatric Patients

“Children are not tiny adults” is an adage commonly used in pediatrics to emphasize the fact that children often have different physiological responses to sickness and trauma compared to adults. However, despite widespread acceptance of this concept, diagnostic blood testing is an excellent example of clinical care that is not yet customized to the needs of children, especially newborns. Cumulative blood loss resulting from clinical testing does not typically impact critically ill adult patients, but can quickly escalate in children, leading to iatrogenic anemia and related comorbidities.

This report describes the development of a digital microfluidic testing platform and associated clinical assays purposely curated to address current shortcomings in pediatric laboratory testing by using microliter volumes (<50 µL) of samples.  The capabilities of this platform allow a wide range of assays to be run simultaneously on the same cartridge using significantly reduced sample volumes with results in minutes.

Authors: Rama S. Sista, Rainer Ng, Miriam Nuffer, Michael Basmajian, Jacob Coyne, Jennifer Elderbroom, Daniel Hull, Kathryn Kay, Maithri Krishnamurthy, Christopher Roberts, Daniel Wu, Adam D. Kennedy, Rajendra Singh, Vijay Srinivasan, Vamsee K. Pamula.

Diagnostics. 10(1), 21; January 2020.