Aqueous Molecular Biology Reagents Encapsulated in Polymer Microspheres

A microfluidics-based device enables the encapsulation of aqueous molecular biology reagents within re-dissolvable polymer microspheres.

The device, called MicroPlant, allows both large and small volumes of solutions to be aliquoted into sub-nanoliter droplets, which are converted to polymer beads. The bead size variation is frequently less than 1%, which means extremely low assay variability. The MicroPlant platform is fully scalable--it is capable of producing batches as small as 1,000 beads but also up to 15 million x 96 well plates annually.

The microfluidic chips utilized in the MicroPlant can be easily cleaned to prevent contamination, or simply disposed of in batch-type processes. An advantage of the MicroPlant is its operating temperature flexibility. Each encapsulation procedure may be performed under optimum thermal conditions, ranging from +200 °C to –30 °C. However, in the context of molecular reagent encapsulation, temperatures of 5-37 °C are most applicable.

MicroPlant's hydrogel encapsulation technology offers benefits compared to reagent lyophilization, such as ultra-low wastage and uniform dosing and morphology. The ability to encapsulate highly reagent quantities has a variety of applications in molecular biology processes, such as viral-load quantification, food pathogen detection, and real time PCR.

The MicroPlant was developed by Q Chip, Ltd. (Cardiff, UK).


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