Full integration of a liver assay panel on a centrifugal microfluidic platform

In this report we present the full integration and automation including liquid reagent storage of a standard liver assay panel (LAP) on a centrifugal microfluidic platform. This “lab-on-a-disc” platform concurrently runs a full LAP consisting of six enzymatic assays (albumin (ALB), alkaline phosphatase (ALP), gamma glutamyl transferase (GGT), total serum protein (PROT), total (TBIL) and direct (DBIL) bilirubin) from a ∼50-μl sample of whole blood. Our technology builds upon our previously reported, merely rotationally actuated water dissolvable film (DF) based valves [1]. In this paper we demonstrate that the sacrificial water DF valves can be independently actuated over an unprecedentedly wide range of spin rates spanning between 10 Hz and 60 Hz! Furthermore, we for the first time demonstrate the sequential actuation of 16 (!) independent DF valves, thus enabling a significantly enhanced level of flow control for the delivery of all LAP reagents. The results, which have been benchmarked against the common assay in a hospital lab, display a low CV of 6.8%, only.