Agarose-based microfluidic device for point-of-care concentration and detection of pathogen

Preconcentration of pathogens from patient samples represents a great challenge in point-of-care (POC) diagnostics. Here, a low-cost, rapid, and portable agarose-based microfluidic device was developed to concentrate biological fluid from micro- to picoliter volume. The microfluidic concentrator consisted of a glass slide simply covered by an agarose layer with a binary tree-shaped microchannel, in which pathogens could be concentrated at the end of the microchannel due to the capillary effect and the strong water permeability of the agarose gel. The fluorescent Escherichia coli strain OP50 was used to demonstrate the capacity of the agarose-based device. Results showed that 90% recovery efficiency could be achieved with a million-fold volume reduction from 400 μL to 400 pL. For concentration of 1 × 10(3) cells mL(-1) bacteria, approximately ten million-fold enrichment in cell density was realized with volume reduction from 100 μL to 1.6 pL. Urine and blood plasma samples were further tested to validate the developed method. In conjugation with fluorescence immunoassay, we successfully applied the method to the concentration and detection of infectious Staphylococcus aureus in clinics. The agarose-based microfluidic concentrator provided an efficient approach for POC detection of pathogens.