
Jose Gomez-Marquez, co-director of MIT’s Little Devices Lab, holds a sheet of paper diagnostic blocks, which can be easily printed and then combined in various ways to create customized diagnostic devices.
Image: Melanie Gonick/MIT
Modular blocks could enable labs around the world to cheaply and easily build their own diagnostics.
Researchers at MIT’s Little Devices Lab have developed a set of modular blocks that can be put together in different ways to produce diagnostic devices. These “plug-and-play” devices, which require little expertise to assemble, can test blood glucose levels in diabetic patients or detect viral infection, among other functions.
“Our long-term motivation is to enable small, low-resources laboratories to generate their own libraries of plug-and-play diagnostics to treat their local patient populations independently,” says Anna Young, co-director of MIT’s Little Devices Lab, lecturer at the Institute for Medical Engineering and Science, and one of the lead authors of the paper.
Using this system, called Ampli blocks, the MIT team is working on devices to detect cancer, as well as Zika virus and other infectious diseases. The blocks are inexpensive, costing about 6 cents for four blocks, and they do not require refrigeration or special handling, making them appealing for use in the developing world.
“We see these construction kits as a way of lowering the barriers to making medical technology,” says Jose Gomez-Marquez, co-director of the Little Devices Lab and the senior author of the paper.
Elizabeth Phillips ’13, a graduate student at Purdue University, is also a lead author of the paper, which appears in the journal Advanced Healthcare Materials on May 16. Other authors include Kimberly Hamad-Schifferli, an associate professor of engineering at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and a visiting scientist in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering; Nikolas Albarran, a senior engineer in the Little Devices Lab; Jonah Butler, an MIT junior; and Kaira Lujan, a former visiting student in the Little Devices Lab.
Customized diagnostics
Over the past decade, many researchers have been working on small, portable diagnostic devices based on chemical reactions that occur on paper strips. Many of these tests make use of lateral flow technology, which is the same approach used in home pregnancy tests.
Despite these efforts, such tests have not been widely deployed. One obstacle, says Gomez-Marquez, is that many of these devices are not designed with large-scale manufacturability in mind. Another is that companies may not be interested in mass-producing a diagnostic for a disease that doesn’t affect a large number of people.
The Little Devices Lab researchers realized that they could get these diagnostics into the hands of many more people if they created a kit of modular components that can be put together to generate exactly what the user needs. To that end, they have created about 40 different building blocks that lab workers around the world could easily assemble on their own, just as people began assembling their own radios and other electronic devices from commercially available electronic “breadboards” in the 1970s.
“When the electronic breadboard came out, that meant people didn’t have to worry about building their own resistors or capacitors. They could worry about what they actually wanted to use electronics for, which is to make the entire circuit,” Gomez-Marquez says.
In this case, the components consist of a sheet of paper or glass fiber sandwiched between a plastic or metal block and a glass cover. The blocks, which are about half an inch on each edge, can snap together along any edge. Some of the blocks contain channels for samples to flow straight through, some have turns, and some can receive a sample from a pipette or mix multiple reagents together.
The blocks can also perform different biochemical functions. Many contain antibodies that can detect a specific molecule in a blood or urine sample. Those antibodies are attached to nanoparticles that change color when the target molecule is present, indicating a positive result.
These blocks can be aligned in different ways, allowing the user to create diagnostics based on one reaction or a series of reactions. In one example, the researchers combined blocks that detect three different molecules to create a test for isonicotinic acid, which can reveal whether tuberculosis patients are taking their medication.
The blocks are color-coded by function, making it easier to assemble predesigned devices using instructions that the researchers plan to put online. They also hope that users will develop and contribute their own specifications to the online guide.
Better performance
The researchers also showed that in some ways, these blocks can outperform previous versions of paper diagnostic devices. For example, they found that they could run a sample back and forth over a test strip multiple times, enhancing the signal. This could make it easier to get reliable results from urine and saliva samples, which are usually more dilute than blood samples, but are easier to obtain from patients.
“These are things that cannot be done with standard lateral flow tests, because those are not modular — you only get to run those once,” says Hamad-Schifferli.
The team is now working on tests for human papilloma virus, malaria, and Lyme disease, among others. They are also working on blocks that can synthesize useful compounds, including drugs, as well as blocks that incorporate electrical components such as LEDs.
The ultimate goal is to get the technology into the hands of small labs in both industrialized and developing countries, so they can create their own diagnostics. The MIT team has already sent them to labs in Chile and Nicaragua, where they have been used to develop devices to monitor patient adherence to TB treatment and to test for a genetic variant that makes malaria more difficult to treat.
Catherine Klapperich, associate dean for research and an associate professor of biomedical engineering at Boston University, says the MIT team’s work will help to make the diagnostic design process more inclusive.
“By reducing the barriers to designing new point-of-care paperfluidics, the work invites nonexperts in and will certainly result in new ideas and collaborations in settings all around the world,” says Klapperich, who was not involved in the research. “The practical demonstrations of the system presented here are poised to be immediately useful, while the possibilities for others to build on the tool are large.”
The researchers are now investigating large-scale manufacturing techniques, and they hope to launch a company to manufacture and distribute the kits around the world.
“We are excited to open the platform to other researchers so they can use the blocks and generate their own reactions,” Young says.
Learn more: Plug-and-play diagnostic devices
The Latest on: Plug-and-play diagnostic devices
via Google News
The Latest on: Plug-and-play diagnostic devices
- Get Your Internet Out Of My Thingson February 19, 2021 at 4:00 pm
The FBI gives a big mention to Universal Plug and Play (UPnP). The great thing about UPnP is that it enables automatic discovery and remote configuration, so that devices that use UPnP are easily ...
- CMOS X-ray Detectors Market Emerging Technologies, Key Players Analysis, Development, and Industry Expansion Strategies 2026on February 10, 2021 at 7:43 pm
The user has to simply plug-and-play the system. It is capable of speeding up time-to-market and delivering total cost savings for system integrators and original equipment manufacturers.
- Power Components and Products of the Week (2/7 - 2/13)on February 10, 2021 at 11:58 am
While that has impacted the rollout of everything from consumer devices to cars ... the necessary USB and flat connection cables for plug and play, and its communication board supports programming ...
- Magnet-Free Inductive Position Sensor Targets Automotive-Motor Commutationon February 10, 2021 at 8:48 am
Among the sensing options are Hall-effect devices; optical ... all of the necessary USB and flat connection cables for plug and play, and its communication board supports programming of the ...
- Obd2 code reader china KW903 KONNWEI bluetooth code reader ELM327 V1.5 for Android Windowson February 5, 2021 at 4:00 pm
It supports all OBDII protocols: J1850 VPW, J1850 PWM, IS09141 - 2, KWP2000 and CAN - Small size and compact structure, plug and play. 6.ISO15765-4 CAN(11bit ID,500 Kbaud) 7.ISO15765-4 CAN(29bit ...
- Tim Wojcik Brings 'Consistency of Purpose' to DRX-1 Wireless DR Detectoron February 4, 2021 at 4:00 pm
Not quite the adjectives you'd expect to describe the engineering lead on a ground-breaking new medical device project ... the idea of creating a DR detector with the same kind of plug-and-play ...
- How CRISPR might help diagnose and halt dangerous outbreaks fasteron February 4, 2021 at 4:12 am
Their "plug and play" characteristics should allow a short turnaround to ... technology and probably will be accelerated because of COVID and the need for better diagnostic tests that are much more ...
- Diagnostics News and Researchon February 3, 2021 at 4:00 pm
New technology developed by the University of Bristol has the potential to accelerate uptake and development of on-chip diagnostic techniques ... low-cost and sensitive devices to be used in ...
- Building a Plug-and-Play Future for Healthcareon February 3, 2021 at 4:00 pm
If such products could easily plug and play with other equipment at the point ... and relevant allergies. Likewise, device-to-device communications will enable diagnostic products to help control ...
via Bing News