Label‐Free Sickle Cell Disease Diagnosis using a Low‐Cost, Handheld Platform

• Published in: Advanced materials technologies 2016-08, Vol.1 (5), p.n/a
• Main Authors: Yenilmez, Bekir, Knowlton, Stephanie, Yu, Chu Hsiang, Heeney, Matthew M., Tasoglu, Savas
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: disease diagnostics; magnetic focusing; point of care; sickle cell disease
• ISSN: 2365-709X; 2365-709X
• DOI: 10.1002/admt.201600100

Recent technological advancements have made strides in shifting clinical diagnostics from large centralized laboratories to the point of care, thus widely increasing the accessibility to such diagnostic procedures worldwide. For sickle cell disease diagnostics, many current technologies require costly equipment and specialized training while others rely on subjective interpretation of results and can be vulnerable to user error. In contrast, the self‐contained, user‐friendly, and low‐cost platform proposed here uses magnetic focusing to separate, image, and analyze blood cells based on their densities. Here, the applicability of this approach is demonstrated to provide a quantitative diagnosis of sickle cell disease. Further, in low‐resource settings such as sub‐Saharan Africa (where the disease is common but no ubiquitous testing and monitoring procedures are in place), this technology can enable simple, rapid, and accessible sickle cell disease diagnostics and monitoring. A self‐contained, user‐friendly, and low‐cost platform is proposed here which uses magnetic levitation and focusing to separate, image, and analyze blood cells based on their densities. The applicability of this approach to provide a quantitative diagnosis of sickle cell disease is demonstrated. This technology enables simple, rapid, and accessible sickle cell disease diagnostics and monitoring which can be used in low‐resource settings.