A point of care platform based on microfluidic chip for nucleic acid extraction in less than 1 minute

In view of the complex procedure of nucleic acid extraction, there exists a huge challenge for the widespread use of point-of-care diagnostics for nucleic acid testing. To achieve point-of-care applications in a more rapid and cost-efficient manner, we designed a snake pipe-shaped microfluidic chip so as to accomplish reagents-prestored, time-saving, operation-simple nucleic acid extraction. All reagents needed for this process, including lysis buffer, wash buffer, elution buffer, and so on, were preloaded in the snake pipe and securely isolated by membrane valves, without the need for using any specialized equipment. By an integrated chip and a powerful ultrasonic, this device could complete virus nucleic acid extraction from sophisticated serum samples in less than 1 min. We used hepatitis B virus (HBV) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) mixed with different sources of serum as samples to be extracted. The coefficient of variation of HBV and HIV extraction on-chip was 1.32% and 2.74%, respectively, and there were no significant differences between on-chip and commercial instrument extraction (P > 0.05, α = 0.05) in different dilution ratios, which showed that the extraction device we established had excellent stability and sensitivity.