Xudong (Sherman) Fan, Ph.D., John Younger, MD, MS
$100,000
Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) have become a very widely used tool for the detection and quantification of various analytes. Despite its utility and longevity as a research and diagnostic tool, the price of such assays remains high. In part, this is due to costly reagents such as antibodies and assay-development costs.
Drs Xudong (Sherman) Fan, Ph.D. and Maung (Malcolm) Khaing Oo, Ph.D. have developed a microfluidic plate to replace the standard 96-well plate typically used for ELISA that has the potential to substantially improve on the standard tool. Preliminary tests suggests that the new plate requires only 25-50% of the reagents a normal ELISA does, 40 instead of 400 minutes to run, and with a 2 orders of magnitude dynamic range, it retains ELISA’s typical performance as well. Furthermore, because the plate is compatible with automatic pipettors and standard imaging equipment – it has the potential to bring down the cost and time for this important assay, without introducing costs for adoption. The early prototype development work for the Optofluidic Bioassay plates were funded by Coulter.
Contact Tom Marten for more information.