Mobile Platform for Multiplexed Detection and Differentiation of Disease-Specific Nucleic Acid Sequences, Using Microfluidic Loop-Mediated Isothermal Amplification and Smartphone Detection.

New tools are needed to enable rapid detection, identification, and reporting of infectious viral and microbial pathogens in a wide variety of point-of-care applications that impact human and animal health. We report the design, construction, and characterization of a platform for multiplexed analysis of disease-specific DNA sequences that utilizes a smartphone camera as the sensor in conjunction with a hand-held "cradle" that interfaces the phone with a silicon-based microfluidic chip embedded within a credit-card-sized cartridge. Utilizing specific nucleic acid sequences for four equine respiratory pathogens as representative examples, we demonstrated the ability of the system to utilize a single 15 µL droplet of test sample to perform selective positive/negative determination of target sequences, including integrated experimental controls, in approximately 30 min. Our approach utilizes loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) reagents predeposited into distinct lanes of the microfluidic chip, which when exposed to target nucleic acid sequences from the test sample, generates fluorescent products that when excited by appropriately selected light emitting diodes (LEDs), are visualized and automatically analyzed by a software application running on the smartphone microprocessor. The system achieves detection limits comparable to those obtained by laboratory-based methods and instruments. Assay information is combined with the information from the cartridge and the patient to populate a cloud-based database for epidemiological reporting of test results.

White blood cell counting on smartphone paper electrochemical sensor.

White blood cell (WBC) analysis provides rich information in rapid diagnosis of acute bacterial and viral infections as well as chronic disease management. For patients with immune deficiency or leukemia WBC should be persistently monitored. Current WBC counting method relies on bulky instrument and trained personnel and is time consuming. Rapid, low-cost and portable solution is in highly demand for point of care test. Here we demonstrate a label-free smartphone based electrochemical WBC counting device on microporous paper with patterned gold microelectrodes. WBC separated from whole blood was trapped by the paper with microelectrodes. WBC trapped on the paper leads to the ion diffusion blockage on microelectrodes, therefore cell concentration is determined by peak current on the microelectrodes measured by a differential pulse voltammeter and the quantitative results are collected by a smartphone wirelessly within 1min. We are able to rapidly quantify WBC concentrations covering the common physiological and pathological range (200-20000µL-1) with only 10µL sample and high repeatability as low as 10% in CoV (Coefficient of Variation). The unique smartphone paper electrochemical sensor ensures fast cell quantification to achieve rapid and low-cost WBC analysis at the point-of-care under resource limited conditions.