Tunable magnetic alginate microbeads by using a spotting-based alginate microbead generator and Its applications for immunoassay-based diagnosis

This study presents a new method for generating tunable and uniform magnetic alginate microbeads, which can be widely employed in the field of the bead-based bioassays such as sample pretreatment or immunoassays. The proposed microfluidic chip comprises pneumatically-driven vibrators to continuously spot alginate microdroplets in a thin oil layer. Continuously, the temporarily formed alginate microdroplets sank into a CaCl2 solution to become gelled microbeads. Besides, 8 microchannels with radiation-shape arrangement were designed to equally distribute the alginate/magnetic-nanoparticles suspension supplied by only one syringe pump. In addition the sandwiched fluorescent immunoassay (FIA) for the detection of dengue virus can also be carried out by utilizing the magnetic alginate microbeads. Therefore, the tunable and uniform magnetic alginate microbeads can be successfully generated and demonstrated for biological applications.

[1]  P ? ? ? ? ? ? ? % ? ? ? ? , 1991 .

[2]  Lorenzo Capretto,et al.  Effect of the gelation process on the production of alginate microbeads by microfluidic chip technology. , 2008, Lab on a chip.

[3]  Gwo-Bin Lee,et al.  Extraction of genomic DNA and detection of single nucleotide polymorphism genotyping utilizing an integrated magnetic bead-based microfluidic platform , 2009 .

[4]  M. Bernabei,et al.  Alginate microparticles for enzyme peroral administration. , 2002, International journal of pharmaceutics.

[5]  Stephen B. Dunnett,et al.  On-chip alginate microencapsulation of functional cells , 2008 .

[6]  Gwo-Bin Lee,et al.  A droplet-based microfluidic system capable of droplet formation and manipulation , 2009 .

[7]  Yung-Chih Wu,et al.  A novel pH-sensitive hydrogel composed of N,O-carboxymethyl chitosan and alginate cross-linked by genipin for protein drug delivery. , 2004, Journal of controlled release : official journal of the Controlled Release Society.

[8]  Jing Liu,et al.  Shape-controlled production of biodegradable calcium alginate gel microparticles using a novel microfluidic device. , 2006, Langmuir : the ACS journal of surfaces and colloids.

[9]  Munishwar N. Gupta,et al.  Purification of α-amylases using magnetic alginate beads , 2001 .

[10]  P. Hubert,et al.  Hydrophobically modified alginate hydrogels as protein carriers with specific controlled release properties. , 2004, Journal of controlled release : official journal of the Controlled Release Society.