The mChip. |
Samuel
K. Sia, assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia
Engineering, has developed an innovative strategy for an integrated
microfluidic-based diagnostic device—in effect, a lab-on-a-chip—that can
perform complex laboratory assays, and do so with such simplicity that
these tests can be carried out in the most remote regions of the world.
In a paper published in Nature Medicine online July 31 and in print Aug.
4, Sia presents the first published field results on how
microfluidics—the manipulation of small amounts of fluids—and
nanoparticles can be successfully leveraged to produce a functional
low-cost diagnostic device in extreme resource-limited settings.
Sia
and his team performed testing in Rwanda over the last four years in
partnership with Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health and three
local non-government organizations in Rwanda, targeting hundreds of
patients. His device, known as mChip (mobile microfluidic chip),
requires only a tiny finger prick of blood, effective even for a
newborn, and gives—in less than 15 minutes—quantitative objective
results that are not subject to user interpretation. This new technology
significantly reduces the time between testing patients and treating
them, providing medical workers in the field results that are much
easier to read at a much lower cost. New low-cost diagnostics like the
mChip (pictured below) could revolutionize medical care around the
world.
“We
have engineered a disposable credit card-sized device that can produce
blood-based diagnostic results in minutes,” said Sia. “The idea is to
make a large class of diagnostic tests accessible to patients in any
setting in the world, rather than forcing them to go to a clinic to draw
blood and then wait days for their results.”
Sia’s
lab at Columbia Engineering has developed the mChip devices in
collaboration with Claros Diagnostics Inc., a venture capital-backed
startup that Sia co-founded in 2004. (The company has recently been
named by MIT’s Technology Review as one of the 50 most innovative
companies in the world.) The microchip inside the device is formed
through injection molding and holds miniature forms of test tubes and
chemicals; the cost of the chip is about $1 and the entire instrument
about $100.
Sia
hopes to use the mChip to help pregnant women in Rwanda who, while they
may be suffering from AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases, cannot be
diagnosed with any certainty because they live too far away from a
clinic or hospital with a lab.
“Diagnosis
of infectious diseases is very important in the developing world,” said
Sia. “When you’re in these villages, you may have the drugs for many
STDs, but you don’t know who to give treatments to, so the challenge
really comes down to diagnostics.”
A
version of the mChip that tests for prostate cancer has also been
developed by Claros Diagnostics and was approved in 2010 for use in
Europe.
Sia’s
work also focuses on developing new high-resolution tools to control
the extracellular environments around cells, in order to study how they
interact to form human tissues and organs. His lab uses techniques from a
number of different fields, including biochemistry, molecular biology,
microfabrication, microfluidics, materials chemistry, and cell and
tissue biology.
Sia
was named one of the world’s top young innovators for 2010 by MIT’s
Technology Review for his work in biotechnology and medicine, and by
NASA as one of 10 innovators in human health and sustainability. In
2008, he received a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation
that included a $400,000 grant to support his other research specialty
in three-dimensional tissue engineering. A recipient of the Walter H.
Coulter Early Career Award in 2008, Sia participated in the National
Academy of Engineering’s U.S. Frontiers of Engineering symposium for the
nation’s brightest young engineers in 2007. He earned his B.Sc. in
biochemistry from the University of Alberta, and his Ph.D. in biophysics
from Harvard University, where he was also a postdoctoral fellow in
chemistry and chemical biology.
The mChip project has been supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health and Wallace Coulter Foundation.
Microfluidics-based diagnostics of infectious diseases in the developing world
