Microfluidic solutions for miniaturization, integration, automation and parallelization of tests on commercially available instruments

We demonstrate that Lab-on-a-Chip implementations can be designed for operation in common commercialized instruments like laboratory centrifuges, DVD drives, or real-time PCR cyclers. On the one hand this approach could render the expensive development of tailor-made instruments superfluous and could significantly reduce market entry barriers for developing Lab-on-a-Chip solutions. On the other hand this provides instrument companies with the opportunity to upgrade their devices e.g. by integrating complex sample preparation protocols prior to the detection for which the instruments are designed. We demonstrate this approach for the following applications: 1) automated DNA-purification operated on a standard laboratory centrifuges with 50% yield compared to gold standards, 2) DNA pre-amplification, aliquoting, and real-time PCR operated on a slightly modified real-time thermocycler (Rotor-Gene) with <; 10 copy sensitivity, 3) isothermal DNA amplification by recombinase polymerase amplification with <; 20 copy sensitivity and a time-to-result of less than 15 minutes, also operated on the Rotor-Gene platform, 4) hematocrit measurement of less than 10 μL of whole blood in a DVD drive.