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:
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A U.S. Provisional Patent, serial number 62/173,477 was filed on 6/10/15.
Development Stage:
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The technology has been tested, and is ready for commercialization.
Researchers:
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Siva A. Vanapalli, Associate Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering, Whitacre College of Engineering, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409.
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Swastika S. Bithi, Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Chemical Engineering, Whitacre College of Engineering, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409.
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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.
