Researchers from the University of Cincinnati (UC) have developed a mobile mini-laboratory that connects directly to the smartphone and can diagnose infectious diseases such as malaria, HIV or the coronavirus. The results are accurate and inexpensive.
If required, the portable laboratory device can also be connected to a doctor’s office via an app and the data obtained can be transmitted directly. UC professor Chong Ahn and his research team most recently used the smartphone laboratory to test for malaria. The device can also be used for tests on numerous other chronic or infectious diseases. The malaria study was reported in January in the journal Nature Microsystems & Nanoengineering.
Ahn is a professor of electrical and biomedical engineering at the College of Engineering and Applied Science at UC. His research team has developed a novel single-use plastic laboratory chip that uses capillary action to draw a saliva or blood sample through two channels. A channel mixes the sample with freeze-dried detection antibodies. The other contains a freeze-dried luminescent material so that the results can be read when the divided samples reconnect on the three optical sensors.
The results of the smartphone laboratory are accurate and inexpensive
“The innovation of this device is the use of a capillary-controlled microfluidic laboratory chip,” says UC PhD student Sthitodhi Ghosh, the lead author of the study. “The entire test is therefore carried out automatically on the chip.” The performance is comparable to laboratory tests, but at the same time significantly cheaper. In the malaria study, the test was sensitive enough to reliably detect infection with the parasites. The scientists emphasize that in addition to viruses, hormones and other biomarkers can also be detected, which also makes the method potentially suitable for the detection of mental illnesses such as depression.
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