Sequential trench well based microfluidic platform to isolate bacteria from whole blood with large volume processing.

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Microfluidics
• Infectious Disease Diagnostics

Background:

• Effective bacterial separation from blood is vital for timely infection diagnosis.
• Low bacterial loads and high blood cell counts pose significant challenges to current separation methods.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate a microfluidic system for efficient bacteria isolation from whole blood.
• To assess the system's performance in terms of red blood cell removal and bacterial recovery rates.
• To evaluate the impact of this separation technique on accelerating antimicrobial susceptibility testing.

Main Methods:

• A microfluidic device with a sequential trench well structure was designed.
• Sedimentation-based separation principles were employed for bacterial isolation.
• The system's efficiency was evaluated using red blood cell removal and bacterial recovery metrics.
• The isolated bacteria were used for image-based antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST).

Main Results:

• The microfluidic system achieved over 99.99% red blood cell (RBC) removal.
• Bacterial recovery rates reached up to nearly 78%.
• The integrated approach reduced the conventional AST procedure time by up to 42.18 hours.

Conclusions:

• The developed microfluidic platform offers a simple, effective method for isolating bacteria from blood.
• This technology has significant potential for improving the speed and efficiency of infection diagnostics.
• The approach streamlines microbiological analysis and antimicrobial susceptibility testing processes.