A microfluidic device for blood analysis in neonates

Sersense, Inc., Rochester MN

Investigators

Linked publications, trials & patents

Abstract

ABSTRACT Premature infants are frequently at risk of infection, jaundice and hypoglycemia? conditions monitored by anal- ysis of blood for c-reactive protein (CRP), bilirubin and glucose respectively. Typically, 0.5 mL of blood is drawn each time an infant is tested with multiple blood draws happening over the course of days. Given that total blood volume of in premature infants is ~ 50 mL, up to 20% of blood volume may be lost due to testing. This puts infants at risk of iatrogenic anemia and packed red blood cell transfusions. While these transfusions are considered safe in many regards, they do expose neonates to transfusion-acquired infections, cytomegalo- virus in particular. Our team has identified a need for volume-sparing blood analysis platform that could be deployed in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs). To address this need, we will develop an automated micro- fluidic platform for analysis of CRP, bilirubin and glucose in <5 microliters of blood. This will represent ~100 fold reduction in the volume of blood collected for the same assay presently. Beyond decreasing the risks of anemia in newborn babies, such sample sparing blood analysis may enable clinical research in neonatology which is currently limited in large part due the health risks associated with collection of large volumes of blood. We should also underscore that the microfluidic device to be developed here represents platform technology with general utility for monitoring a wide range of analytes from a small blood volume. This means that, in the future, the multiplexing capabilities of this technology may be expanded to include additional analytes such as electrolytes and blood urea nitrogen (BUN).