Post Date
May 03 2024

Microfluidic Lab on a Chip Cytometer for Point of Care HIV/AIDS Diagnostics

This project is aimed to develop a product level demonstration of a biochip for the point of care diagnosis of HIV/AIDS. The current medical equipment used for HIV/AIDS diagnostic is bulky and expensive (cost around 7 -15 million PKR) and requires operating/maintenance cost of about 1 million PKR. Due to this reason this equipment is only available in big hospitals and sophisticated research laboratories in Pakistan, and is neither accessible nor economical for a vast majority of the infected population. Lab on a Chip is an emerging technology that has made it possible to develop portable biochips for the diagnosis of a broad spectrum of diseases. The device could not only enumerate the biomarkers but could also provide useful information about the disease signatures associated with its developmental stages in a human body. The chip will intake a tiny blood sample that will flow through microfluidic channels fabricated using integrated circuit technology. A set of microelectrodes integrated on the microfluidic channels will output electrical pulses sensitive to the count and shape of the target cells as the blood sample is pushed to flow through the inlet of the channel. By coating biological antibodies that are specific for a given biomarker, the biomarkers in the blood sample will be captured in a chamber inside the chip while rest of the sample will flow through another set of microelectrodes. A differential impedance signal between the inlet and outlet of the capture chamber provides information that correlates to the number, size, morphology, and, the membrane properties of the target cells.