Institue of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology seminar series (IBMB) - Dr. Chris Backhouse

Speaker profile: Dr. Chris Backhouse

Professor, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo
Title of seminar:  "Lab on Chip Technologies and Their Challenges at the Nanoscale"
All are welcome!

Please contact the Host, Dr. Elizabeth Meiering, if anyone would like to meet with Dr. Backhouse on the day of his seminar.

Abstract:  Although there has been a great deal of development worldwide of the Lab on Chip (LOC) technologies, they have yet to revolutionise elds such as healthcare. Much of this can be attributed to the challenges of developing a cost-e ective infrastructure to support LOC operation. However, a number of other challenges remain, notably in the areas of interface and biocompatibility. This seminar will discuss some of these challenges in the context of our ongoing development of inexpensive systems that enable implementations of a wide range of nanbiotechnological processes, both for medical diagnostics and for the exploration of nanoscale and self-assembly technologies.

Our laboratory has developed a range of LOC systems based on approaches that are suitable for low-cost, high-volume manufacture (i.e. scalable). As an example, we recently reported on a sample in, answer out system that can perform a medical diagnostic in approximately 1 hour.^a

Because of the scalability and modularity of our approach we have managed, on an ongoing basis, to halve our system cost each 6 months, ($600 in the above system). This system performed genetic ampli cation via PCR followed by electrophoretic analysis using the micro uidic chip shown here (top right). This approach is highly recon gurable; for instance, variants of this system have been used for self-assembly techniques such as heteroduplex analysis (middle right) and real-time PCR and melt curve analysis (bottom right).

This same infrastructure and its applications to medical diagnostics provides an ideal platform for the exploration of self-assembly methods such as heteroduplex analysis. These methods provide interesting (and rapid ways) of analyzing DNA as well as allowing the formation of self-assembled structures under automated conditions. This talk will present the recent LOC work of the Backhouse lab with an emphasis on the development of extremely inexpensive (e.g. $100 to $1000) diagnostic systems and their application in the near-term for medical diagnostics and, in the longer term, an exploration of nanobiotechnologies (and their challenges).

^aKaigala et al., Analyst (2010) 135 1606 1617