Biophysical Society Thematic Meeting - November 16-20, 2015

Biophysics in the Understanding, Diagnosis, and Treatment of Infectious Diseases Poster Abstracts

28-POS Board 28 Construction of an Automated Cost-Effective Microfluidic Chip that is Able to Capture and Concentrate Human Immunodeficiency Virus-1 Particles Chanelle Mc Arthur , Frederick Balagadde. K-rith, Durban, South Africa. Discovered in 1981, HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) has become a global pandemic, with approximately 35 million people living with the disease by 2013. To date, Sub-Saharan Africa remains the most affected region, with almost 1 in every 20 adults living with HIV. Currently, HIV diagnosis and monitoring is fraught with many challenges. Viral load assays demand resources such as money, a high level of expertise to perform the tests and interpret data, time, equipment, laboratory space and proper infrastructure, all of which are not feasible in many regions of Africa. We propose a new microfluidics based approach to viral load monitoring that has the potential to become a global resource in biological and medical science. Microfluidics allows for the scalability of tests that require microliter volumes of reagents leading to reduced total costs. Using multilayer soft lithography, we were able to create a microfluidic device containing structural sieve valves capable of trapping HIV-1 capturing microspheres. Once the microspheres were captured, we introduced different concentrations of HIV-1 particles. The successful capturing and concentrating of HIV-1 particles was identified and quantified by fluorescent intensity. We were successfully able to carry out viral load experiments via automation on a microfluidic device that has the capability of processing hundreds of patient samples providing qualitative and quantitative data.

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