Microfluidic Biosensing Technologies for Point-of-Care Applications

A special issue of Biosensors (ISSN 2079-6374). This special issue belongs to the section "Biosensors and Healthcare".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 June 2024 | Viewed by 1815

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Bioengineeering, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, UK
Interests: microfluidics; droplet microfluidics; detection; sorting; surface acoustic waves; imaging; raman spectroscopy
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
1. Sphere Fluidics Ltd., Babraham, Cambridgeshire CB22 3AT, UK
2. Riccarton Campus, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh EH14 4AS, UK
Interests: acoustofluidics; microfluidics; droplet microfluidics; microfabrication; biosensors; parasitology; impedance cytometry; image analysis

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Guest Editor
Development Engineer, Biocrucible, Emmanuel Building, Chesterford Research Park, Essex CB10 1XL, UK
Interests: microfluidics; point-of-care diagnostics; dielectrophoresis; microfabrication; cell sorting; nanoparticles

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Guest Editor
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Lassonde School of Engineering, York University, Toronto, ON M3J 1P3, Canada
Interests: microfluidics; lab on a chip; multiphase flow; particle microfluidics; point of care diagnosis; food and water monitoring technology; biosensor; sample preparation
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Microfluidics has grown significantly since the birth of the field in the 1980s and has already revolutionized a variety of medical industry sectors. The explosive growth of start-up companies in the field, combined with the entry of industrial giants into the microfluidic area, has also led to the growth of the microfluidic market over the past few years. Despite this, the field remains young, growing, and evolving.

Microfluidics involves the science and technology surrounding the manipulation of fluids at the micro- or nano-scale. What microfluidics offers is simple yet highly beneficial: nanoliter-scale fluid consumption with minimal operation times. Standard laboratory procedures such as pipetting, mixing, centrifugation, and incubation require expensive and bulky equipment, large amounts of consumables, and high-maintenance laboratories while being relatively slow processes. Integrated microfluidic biosensing platforms would not only offer sample and reagent reduction, but also faster reaction times, higher sensitivity, and overall cost reduction compared to standard laboratory equipment. Importantly, such systems also have the capacity for parallelization, high throughput analysis, and real-time control and monitoring, which altogether help to broaden the possibilities for applications in clinical diagnostics.

Recent developments in microfluidics have helped researchers working in industries and educational institutes to adopt some of these platforms for point-of-care (POC) diagnostics. This Biosensors Special Issue aims to collate the latest advancements in the fields of microfluidic biosensing technologies and present challenges, possible solutions, and successful demonstrations related to the translation of this technology for POC diagnostic applications. We also wish to disseminate details of the variety of fabrication techniques required for developing microfluidic-integrated biosensors intended for use in POC diagnostics in the medical industry.

You are cordially invited to submit research papers, short communications, and review articles to this Special Issue in Biosensors titled “Microfluidic Biosensor Platform Development for Point-of-Care Applications”.

Dr. Muhsincan Sesen
Dr. John McGrath
Dr. Ameya Vaidya
Dr. Pouya Rezai
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Biosensors is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • biosensors
  • microfluidics
  • droplet microfluidics
  • point-of-care diagnostics
  • high-throughput screening
  • detection
  • signal processing
  • image processing
  • sorting
  • microfabrication

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

13 pages, 5518 KiB  
Article
Microfluidic Sensor Based on Cell-Imprinted Polymer-Coated Microwires for Conductometric Detection of Bacteria in Water
by Shiva Akhtarian, Ali Doostmohammadi, Daphne-Eleni Archonta, Garrett Kraft, Satinder Kaur Brar and Pouya Rezai
Biosensors 2023, 13(10), 943; https://doi.org/10.3390/bios13100943 - 20 Oct 2023
Viewed by 1303
Abstract
The rapid, inexpensive, and on-site detection of bacterial contaminants using highly sensitive and specific microfluidic sensors is attracting substantial attention in water quality monitoring applications. Cell-imprinted polymers (CIPs) have emerged as robust, cost-effective, and versatile recognition materials with selective binding sites for capturing [...] Read more.
The rapid, inexpensive, and on-site detection of bacterial contaminants using highly sensitive and specific microfluidic sensors is attracting substantial attention in water quality monitoring applications. Cell-imprinted polymers (CIPs) have emerged as robust, cost-effective, and versatile recognition materials with selective binding sites for capturing whole bacteria. However, electrochemical transduction of the binding event to a measurable signal within a microfluidic device to develop easy-to-use, compact, portable, durable, and affordable sensors remains a challenge. For this paper, we employed CIP-functionalized microwires (CIP-MWs) with an affinity towards E. coli and integrated them into a low-cost microfluidic sensor to measure the conductometric transduction of CIP–bacteria binding events. The sensor comprised two CIP-MWs suspended perpendicularly to a PDMS microchannel. The inter-wire electrical resistance of the microchannel was measured before, during, and after exposure of CIP-MWs to bacteria. A decline in the inter-wire resistance of the sensor after 30 min of incubation with bacteria was detected. Resistance change normalization and the subsequent analysis of the sensor’s dose-response curve between 0 to 109 CFU/mL bacteria revealed the limits of detection and quantification of 2.1 × 105 CFU/mL and 7.3 × 105 CFU/mL, respectively. The dynamic range of the sensor was 104 to 107 CFU/mL where the bacteria counts were statistically distinguishable from each other. A linear fit in this range resulted in a sensitivity of 7.35 μS per CFU/mL. Experiments using competing Sarcina or Listeria cells showed specificity of the sensor towards the imprinted E. coli cells. The reported CIP-MW-based conductometric microfluidic sensor can provide a cost-effective, durable, portable, and real-time solution for the detection of pathogens in water. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Microfluidic Biosensing Technologies for Point-of-Care Applications)
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