On-Chip Pretreatment of Whole Blood by Using MEMS Technology

Microfabrication technology has stimulated a plurality of lab-on-a-chip research and development efforts aimed at enabling biomedical researchers and health care practitioners to manipulate and analyze complex biological fluids at the nano and microliter scale. On-chip pretreatment of whole blood is one of the hottest topics in lab-on-a-chip research since whole blood has been regarded as the most important clinical sample. Various microfluidic chips for blood sample pretreatment, such as plasma isolation, cells separation, cells lysis, gene or protein purification, etc., are described in this e-book. These microchips are designed and fabricated by MEMS technology. Original clinical samples, such as whole blood, which could be directly pre-treated on the microfluidic chips, can increase diagnostic capacity significantly by enabling rapid, point-of-care chemical analysis requiring only nanoliter sample and reagent volumes, thereby reducing cost and turn-around time. This e-book is a valuable reference for readers interested in this specific clinical application of advanced MEMS technology.