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A Low-Cost and Portable Medical and Diagnostic Devices
Targeted for the Third World
G. M. Whitesides and D.A. Edwards

Whitesides has developed a low-cost and portable microfluidic immuno-assay kit for use in the field. The device uses amplification chemistry based on silver deposition on gold-conjugated antibodies. It is compatible with microfluidic flow, and is easily detected by a battery-operated detector or by eye. The device exhibits high sensitivity, and can detect anti-HIV antibodies in a sample of human serum diluted 10,000-fold. The device is robust and uses inexpensive components, making it suitable for deployment in the third world where there is a strong need for this sort of instrumentation. This work couples well to the effort lead by Edwards, whose course in bioengineering has spawned a non-profit start-up, MEND, or Medicine in Need, which is dedicated to the development of an inexpensive cure for TB for the third world.


Last Modified October 19, 2006.

  

Last Modified May 19, 2008.  Graphics by Experimental Soft Condensed Matter Group.   Website by Carole Hoppe Mezian.