[Development of microchips for the analysis of biomarkers in blood]

Several types of microchips have been developed for application in clinical diagnosis. A microchip made of cyclic olefin copolymer with straight microchannels (300 microm width and 100 microm depth) was employed for sandwich ELISA for the determination of serum type I C-peptide (PICP), a biomarker of osteoporosis. This assay enabled us to determine PICP with accuracy and high sensitivity, reducing the time for the immunoassay to 1/6, and the consumption of samples and reagents to 1/50 compared with the conventional method. Furthermore, cell microarray chips with 20,944 microchambers (105 microm width and 50 microm depth), made of polystyrene, were employed for malaria diagnosis and the detection of carcinoma cells among the leukocytes. Around 100 erythrocytes or leukocytes were accommodated in each microchamber with the formation of a monolayer. For malaria diagnosis, it offered 10-100 times higher sensitivity in the detection of malaria infected erythrocytes than conventional light microscopy, and easy operation within 15 min. By double staining for epithelial cells on the cell microarray chip, one carcinoma cell could be detected among 1,800,000 leukocytes. These results indicate the potential of microchips for clinic diagnosis.