microBAT - MIcrofluidics Cartridge for RemOte Biofluids AcquisiTion

Decentralized sampling of biofluids plays a key role in an increasing patient centric vision of healthcare, by (i) reducing the economic burden, (ii) empowering personalized medicine, (iii) reaching patients in remote settings, (iv) improving chronic patients’ quality of life and (v) screening at population level. However, remote (self) sampling is not widely adopted in clinical practice as current solutions (e.g. dried blood spot (DBS) cards) do not provide reliable and standardized samples. Moreover, they are mostly focused on blood, thus not exploiting other invaluable biofluids (e.g. saliva, sweat, interstitial fluids), while on-spot processing of the sample is not possible, which limits the downstream analyses. To tackle this, the aim of microBAT project is to develop an innovative platform for remote microsampling of biofluids in a standardized and accurate manner with unprecedented on-chip sample processing capability. This will be achieved by further building on our microfluidic technology, recently validated in field as a volumetric DBS cartridge. This versatile sampling platform will be validated in clinical settings (e.g. general practitioner office) in the context of therapeutic drug monitoring, human biomonitoring and infectious diseases population screening, using capillary blood and saliva, the latter being a noninvasive but highly relevant emerging sample.

Keywords:Microfluidics, Sample processing, Blood, Self-sampling, Biofluids

Disciplines:Microfluidics/flow chemistry, Clinical chemistry