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About 1 in 4 deaths in the United States are due to cancer, but primary tumors are rarely fatal. Instead, it's when tumors metastasize that cancer becomes so deadly. To help patients and physicians make treatment decisions, teams of researchers have been working on various methods to detect cancer's spread – via the bloodstream – before secondary tumors develop. Now, one team reports a nearly perfect method for separating breast cancer cells from blood. They describe their proof-of-concept device in a paper accepted for publication in Biomicrofluidics, a journal of the American Institute of Physics. Detecting and separating circulating tumor...

enlarge Photograph of the stand alone 1x2 inch SIMBAS chip simultaneously processing five separate whole-blood samples by separating the plasma from the blood cells and detecting the presence of biotin, or vitamin B7. (Credit: Ivan Dimov) — A major milestone in microfluidics could soon lead to stand-alone, self-powered chips that can diagnose diseases within minutes. The device, developed by an international team of researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, Dublin City University in Ireland and Universidad de Valparaíso Chile, is able to process whole blood samples without the use of external tubing and extra components. The researchers have...

US researchers have used ferrofluids as liquid pistons that could be used to make adjustable liquid lenses with nearly perfect spherical interfaces for applications such as an optometrist's phoropter. A phoropter measures the way light is focused in the eye and is used to determine prescriptions for glasses and contact lenses. Ferrofluids are colloidal solutions of ferromagnetic nanoparticles suspended in a dispersing liquid. Ferrofluid droplets can be manipulated by a magnetic field, so they could be used in systems that need precise control, such as optics, drug delivery, and electronic devices. Amir Hirsa and colleagues from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New...

Artificial lung technology could reduce the death rate for patients awaiting a lung transplant, say US scientists. Advanced lung disease is characterised by an inability to remove carbon dioxide from the blood and reduced oxygen uptake efficiency. A shortage of donors can mean long delays and high mortality rates for those awaiting a transplant. The only technology available to aid sufferers during this time is based in intensive care units, hindering quality of life. Now, Joseph Vacanti and coworkers at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, have developed a device that achieves the CO2/O2 gas exchange that, when implanted in the body, could allow...

About 30 percent of Americans believe they have food allergies. However, the actual number is far smaller, closer to 5 percent, according to a recent study commissioned by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). That’s due in large part to the unreliability of the skin test that doctors commonly use to test for food allergies. MIT chemical engineer Christopher Love believes he has a better way to diagnose such allergies. His new technology, described in the June 7 issue of the journal Lab on a Chip, can analyze individual immune cells taken from patients, allowing for precise...

Norwegian scientists have developed a microfluidic platform to grow stem cells outside of the body in a controlled manner for a period of three weeks.  Stem cells from bone marrow are known as mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) and like all adult stem cells they survive in specific microenvironments within the body, known as niches. But it's not so easy to grow them outside the body as they spread out as they grow which makes it difficult to control their microenvironment in vitro, as they tend to inhabit and block feeding channels. Previous microfluidic systems using glass substrates use hazardous chemicals to...

A production line for uniform lipid-coated microspheres has been created by Japanese scientists. Using a microfluidic device, the team can continuously generate fluid-filled vesicles that are all the same size and all have a single lipid bilayer surrounding them, and could one day be used in drug delivery or artificial cells. Whilst lipid vesicles are used widely, problems with current production methods mean it is difficult to ensure they are all uniform in size and there is just one lipid bilayer surrounding each vesicle. Another tricky issue is developing an efficient encapsulation process, making sure the vesicle contents aren't lost during...

Our understanding of life and technology at extreme temperatures could become clearer thanks to a microfluidic device that studies ice formation. The new instrument studies ice formation in supercooled water George Whitesides, at Harvard University, Cambridge, US, and colleagues have developed a microfluidic device that produces supercooled water drops (droplets that remain liquid below 0 °C) and measures the temperature at which ice nucleates in them. The device is two orders of magnitude faster that current state-of-the-art ice nucleation instruments and very accurate, claims the team.Ice nucleation controls water's freezing process. Studying how water behaves is important for our comprehension...

Enlarge ImageFast shuffle. Liquids of different colors stream from four inlets on the top of a microPAD into 64 predetermined reservoirs on the bottom.Credit: Martinez et al., PNAS 105 (50) (16 December 2008) To help doctors and health workers in developing countries diagnose diseases, researchers have developed simple detection devices made only of paper and adhesive tape that cost a fraction of conventional diagnostic equipment. The technology could also find uses in environmental monitoring and homeland security. The lab work that hospitals and clinics routinely perform in developed countries is often unavailable in Third World countries. Two primary reasons...

Researchers at Harvard's Whitesides Research Group may have found a way to make microfluidics technology much cheaper by taking advantage of the natural movement of liquid through paper. Hopefully, their work will lead to the creation of disposable diagnostic tests, which will be simple and abundant enough for use in the developing world.   Albert Folch (Credit: University of Washington) Microfluidics deals with the manipulation of liquid and one of its most promising applications is a lab-on-a-chip, which can work with much smaller fluid samples than larger devices. Existing microfluidic chips are generally made from relatively expensive materials like silicon,...