Enhancing Protease Activity Assay in Droplet-Based Microfluidics Using a Biomolecule Concentrator

• Main Authors: Chen, Chia-Hung (Author), Sarkar, Aniruddh (Contributor), Song, Yong-Ak (Contributor), Miller, Miles Aaron (Contributor), Kim, Sung Jae (Contributor), Griffith, Linda G. (Contributor), Lauffenburger, Douglas A. (Contributor), Han, Jongyoon (Contributor)
• Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Biological Engineering (Contributor), Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (Contributor), Goyal, Chia-Hung (Contributor)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Chemical Society (ACS), 2012-09-25T14:05:25Z.
• Subjects: Article
• Online Access: Get fulltext

We introduce an integrated microfluidic device consisting of a biomolecule concentrator and a microdroplet generator, which enhances the limited sensitivity of low-abundance enzyme assays by concentrating biomolecules before encapsulating them into droplet microreactors. We used this platform to detect ultralow levels of matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) from diluted cellular supernatant and showed that it significantly (~10-fold) reduced the time required to complete the assay and the sample volume used.
National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant GM68762)
National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant U54-CA112967)
National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant R01-EB010246)
National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant R01-GM081336)
National Science Foundation (U.S.) (Graduate Fellowship)
United States. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Cipher Program)