BioMEMS Resource Center Research

Blood contains a wealth of information about the functioning of the whole body. Every minute, the entire blood volume is recirculated throughout the body, delivering oxygen and nutrients to every cell and transporting products from and toward all different tissues. At the same time, cells of the immune system are transported quickly and efficiently through blood, to and from every place in the body where they perform specific immuno-surveillance functions. As a result, blood harbors a massive amount of information about the functioning of all tissues and organs in the body. Consequently, blood sampling and analysis are of prime interest for both medical and science applications, and hold a central role in the diagnosis of many physiological and pathological conditions, both localized and systemic.

Among the new technologies with an increasingly broader impact in biology, microfluidics and miniaturized lab-on-a-chip-type devices are extremely attractive for blood analysis. For clinical applications, bringing complete labs for blood analysis to the bedside through point-of-care analyzers capable of comprehensive diagnostics is poised to reshape the delivery of health care. New devices for convenient use at home or in doctors’ offices would allow for rapid and accurate diagnoses and prognoses, based on blood cells, of infectious diseases, cancers, and inflammatory responses. These may also allow better matching between drugs and patient pathophysiology, reducing side effects and improving efficiency of therapy.

In drug discovery, microfluidic devices may redefine the entrance criteria for clinical trials and test for these criteria in a time- and cost-effective way. Nonetheless, in small-animal studies, microfabricated devices would only use minute amounts of blood for analysis, allowing for repetitive sampling at multiple time points and minimizing the adverse effects of blood drawing. Even more ambitious, in discovery-mode research, microfabricated devices for sample preparation would open new possibilities by allowing comprehensive genomic and proteomic analyses from small homogenous subpopulations down to single cells. On the whole, on-chip blood sample preparation would lead to gentler, faster, and more consistent manipulation of living cells, and therefore to more accurate and better quality extracted information.