In the first report of the European Observatory for Nanobiotechnology Winnie Svendsen, Associate Professor at the MIC in Denmark, reviewed a publication on a point of care device targeting the analysis of HIV progression. Svendsen's research focus is on biomedical total integrated analysis systems and nanoprobes. She is working at the Department of Micro- and Nanotechnology (MIC DTU).

She presents the key issues of this microfluidic system and discusses the novelty of this work, evaluates the major impact and comments on potential market applications.

This paper describes a self-contained microfluidic system that is capable of monitoring the progression of the HIV infection by counting and sorting CD4 cells. The system can handle raw blood sample without off-chip sample preparation step and by using laser diode as the light source, the need for big and expensive laser is eliminated. Blood analysis is currently being performed in central labs on expensive, high-maintenance equipment and can be time consuming, whereas the described system is portable, low-cost and could be used in each doctor's office, as a point-of-care instrument at home or in places with high risk of exposure to biowarfare agents.

Highlights are: the degree of integration of the monitoring process, the integration of the light source, costs and efficiency of processing and manufacturing the chip, the first proof of concept that totally integrated more complex POCs are possible. The throughput time is remarkable and the potential market applications are vast.

The full review is available in the first EoN report.

Source: A self-contained microfluidic cell sorting system for HIV diagnosis, Sun, Y. Liu, A.Q. Yap, P.H. Ayi, T.C. 13th Int. Conf. On Solid-State Sensors, Actuators and Microsystems, Proceedings Transducers'05 2, 1708-1711 (2005), ISBN: 0-7803-8994-8, INSPEC Accession Number: 8660031, Digital Object Identifier: 10.1109/SENSOR.2005.1497420