Nanofluidic Pre-Concentration Devices for Enhancing the Detection Sensitivity and Selectivity of Biomarkers for Human Performance Monitoring.

摘要

Real-time monitoring of human performance biomarkers for fatigue, vigilance, and stress among DoD personnel during key missions requires devices that enable facile detection of multiple targets with minimal user intervention. Since the biomarkers are present at dilute levels, pre-concentration under electrical and magnetic fields within microfluidic devices is needed to locally enrich the concentration of each relevant target, so that they may be detected within biofluids that contain high levels of interfering molecules. Optimized conditions of these force fields can then be routinely applied within field settings for facile electrical and optical detection, with minimal user intervention. In this project, researchers developed nano-slit devices and optimized electrokinetic pre-concentration conditions for key neurological biomarkers of interest, by using nanoparticles and aptamers to enhance specificity. Additionally, pre-concentration was coupled to various detection paradigms to achieve high-sensitivity biomarker profiles for future application towards unraveling the signaling pathways for assessing and mitigating stress.