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Updated: Jul 17, 2026
CD4+ T-Lymphocyte Capture Using a Disposable Microfluidic Chip for HIV
Published on: October 1, 2007
A microfluidic device for practical label-free CD4(+) T cell counting of HIV-infected subjects
Xuanhong Cheng1, Daniel Irimia, Meredith Dixon
1Surgical Services and Center for Engineering in Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and Shriners Hospital for Children, Boston, Massachusetts 02114, USA.
Insights
A new microfluidic device offers a simple, rapid, and affordable method for counting CD4(+) T lymphocytes, crucial for monitoring HIV disease progression in resource-limited settings.
Area of Science:
- Biomedical Engineering
- Immunology
- Point-of-Care Diagnostics
Background:
- Accurate CD4(+) T lymphocyte counting is essential for HIV disease staging and treatment monitoring.
- Current methods for CD4 counting are often expensive, complex, and time-consuming, limiting their use in resource-limited settings.
- There is a critical need for accessible and efficient diagnostic tools for HIV management.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop a simple, rapid, and affordable microfluidic device for CD4(+) T lymphocyte counting.
- To enable CD4 counting directly from unprocessed whole blood without labeling.
- To provide a point-of-care solution for HIV disease monitoring.
Main Methods:
- Development of a microfluidic device utilizing cell affinity chromatography under differential shear flow.
- Isolation of CD4(+) T lymphocytes from small volumes (10 microliters) of unprocessed, unlabeled whole blood.
- Label-free CD4 counting using an optical microscope.
Main Results:
- The microfluidic device demonstrated high efficiency in isolating CD4(+) T lymphocytes.
- CD4 counts obtained from the device showed strong correlation with conventional flow cytometry (R(2) = 0.93) across a wide range of cell counts.
- The method is rapid, simple, and label-free.
Conclusions:
- The developed microfluidic device provides a viable solution for accurate CD4 counting in point-of-care and resource-limited settings.
- This technology can significantly improve HIV disease management and treatment monitoring.
- The device offers a cost-effective and user-friendly alternative to existing CD4 counting methods.
Abstract:
Practical HIV diagnostics are urgently needed in resource-limited settings. While HIV infection can be diagnosed using simple, rapid, lateral flow immunoassays, HIV disease staging and treatment monitoring require accurate counting of a particular white blood cell subset, the CD4(+) T lymphocyte. To address the limitations of current expensive, technically demanding and/or time-consuming approaches, we have developed a simple CD4 counting microfluidic device. This device uses cell affinity chromatography operated under differential shear flow to specifically isolate CD4(+) T lymphocytes with high efficiency directly from 10 microliters of unprocessed, unlabeled whole blood. CD4 counts are obtained under an optical microscope in a rapid, simple and label-free fashion. CD4 counts determined in our device matched measurements by conventional flow cytometry among HIV-positive subjects over a wide range of absolute CD4 counts (R(2) = 0.93). This CD4 counting microdevice can be used for simple, rapid and affordable CD4 counting in point-of-care and resource-limited settings.
