Grant: Research Tools and Instruments - Category 1 (<$150,000)

Blood testing is the most commonly-used method in clinical diagnosis because blood analyses provide definitive information of patients' medical conditions. There is urgent need for developing low-cost and easy-to-use point-of-care biochips for blood analyses. CD-based biochips emerge as one of the most promising approaches to achieve this goal. The applicant and his team have constantly dedicated themselves to developing CD-based biochips for multiple and parallel blood analyses. Such effort includes their recent invention of the out-of-plane valve (Yang et al., J. Micromech. Microeng. 2010) that makes on-chip blood separation and metering extremely simple. Because of its structural simplicity and easy-to-control mechanism, a novel CD-based biochip design based on the out-of-plane valve innovation can achieve high performance blood analyses, and meanwhile reduce the manufacturing cost down to 10% of existing commercial products. The objective of this project is to develop an all-in-one material printing process to implement this breakthrough invention toward real-product oriented manufacturing of low-cost CD-based biochips for multiple and parallel blood analyses. Funds have been obtained to set up a material printing system. This system is the key facility of this project, which will speed up the process to put the applicant's innovative CD-based biochips into practice. Once implemented, this system will bring significant benefits to Canada's healthcare and tremendous training opportunities to Canada's next generation biomedical and manufacturing researchers. Funds are requested here to install a glove box for this material printing system, to provide a controlled environment for protecting the users from exposure to potentially dangerous materials and improving the quality of fabricated biochips.