Description:
With the expansive growth of drug screening and other biological assays, there is a need for technologies that can screen drugs using minimal amounts of the compound volumes. Currently, most multi-well plates and pipetting systems are ubiquitously used for this purpose, but are difficult to scale down for use at the nano-level due to problems of volume evaporation and pipetting errors. Although drop-based microfluidics has recently emerged and show great potential, these technologies are not configured to conduct cell-based drug assays with the same ease and fluid handling capability as well as plates and pipetting systems.
The disclosed technology consists of a microfluidic well plate called NOVOPLATE into which standard automatic pipettes can be integrated for use of storing arrays of nanoliter droplets and other cell-based drug assays. This technology reduces sample volumes to nanoliters, eliminates pipetting errors, and significantly reduces operational complexity.
Reference Number: D-1195
Market Applications:
- • Biomedical Research
- • Bioassays
- • Nanotechnology
- • Microfluidics
Features, Benefits & Advantages:
- • Less than 10% evaporation during 48 hour time period
- • Creation of a pipette-integrated microfluidic well plate device
- • Allows for use with standard pipettes
- • High density and parallel storage of samples
- • Eliminates pipetting error
- • Reduces operational complexity
Intellectual Property:
A U.S. Provisional Patent, serial number 62/173,477 was filed on 6/10/15.
Development Stage:
The technology has been tested, and is ready for commercialization.
Researchers:
Siva A. Vanapalli, Associate Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering, Whitacre College of Engineering, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409.
Swastika S. Bithi, Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Chemical Engineering, Whitacre College of Engineering, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409.
Deepak E. Solomon, Graduate Student, Department of Chemical Engineering, Whitacre College of Engineering, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409.
Keywords: Microfluidics, Well plates, nanoliter-dispensing, bioassays.