A self-powered microfluidic chip integrated with fluorescent microscopic counting for biomarkers assay

Sandwich immunoassay plays a significant role in disease diagnostics and prognosis. However, this technology always requires cumbersome manual washing procedures and well trained operators. To address the issues, we made an effort to develop a self-powered microfluidic chip (SP-Chip) to accomplish multiple washing processes and antigen-antibody binding reaction automatically in one-step sliding manner. This smart microfluidic platform integrated with fluorescence microscopic counting technique for rapid and quantitative detection of human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) and carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) in 10 min. Moreover, the versatile strategy is not only applied to various biomarkeres detection, but also suitable for designing other sample-in-answer-out diagnostic system. Taken together, the autonomous, accurate, inexpensive, self-contained, and easy to use chip lays a solid foundation for quantitative detection of biomarkers in the fields of disease treatment and personalized diagnostics.