Nordita seminar

Microfludic devices for disease detection

by Debjani Paul (Indian Institute of Technology - Bombay)

Europe/Stockholm
NORDITA West Seminar room

NORDITA West Seminar room

Description
There is a strong need for affordable and accurate disease detection in developing countries like India in order to provide good quality healthcare to the population. Microfluidics can help in miniaturizing diagnostic platforms so that these can be transported directly to the patient’s bedside (i.e. at the point-of-care) from clinical laboratories. These systems are portable and battery-operated, provide quick results and consume much less patient sample compared to the bench-top systems currently in use. In our lab we are working on diagnostic platforms that are inexpensive, can be operated without continuous electrical power or clinical supervision and can be stored without refrigeration for use in remote and rural parts of India. With this goal in mind we are focusing on cheap substrates and fabrication technologies. In my talk I will describe our attempts at developing a paper-based platform for detection of infectious diseases and a plastic cell sorting device for identifying fetal cells from maternal blood.