Michael Hauser, PhD, associate professor of medicine (Medical Genetics), has received a subcontract on an SBiR phase I grant awarded to Advanced Liquid Logic. The grant is focused on the development of a “lab on a chip” that can measure DNA quality and quantity, which has potential applications to the Duke Biobank.
[toggle title_open="Toggle closed" title_closed="Excerpt from proposal" hide="yes" border="yes" style="default" excerpt_length="0" read_more_text="Read More" read_less_text="Read Less" include_excerpt_html="no"]The overall goal of this project is to develop an automated and low-cost microfluidic device for complete DNA quality control testing. While broadly useful in biomedical research the proposed device will especially address the needs of DNA biobanking.
There is presently an acute need in biobanks for a simple, scalable and costeffective solution for sample quality control including DNA quantity, quality, and purity measurements.
As the scale and number of biobanks continues to grow this need may become a serious bottleneck in many biobanking operations. The proposed device will automate several different DNA QC processes within a single disposable cartridge while consuming only microliters of sample per analysis. The device will combine the flexible droplet-based liquid-handling capabilities of “digital microfluidics” with conventional gel electrophoresis to provide a completely integrated QC solution at significantly reduced labor and reagent costs. Automating the current manual QC workflow at biobanks can also lead to improved assay reproducibility. A low-cost instrument system with these capabilities would be extremely useful in multi-center collaborative research projects as well as promote standardization of protocols and sample metrics across multiple biobanks.[/toggle]
Learn more about the Duke biobanking initiative here and here.