Portable Lab May Speed Army Blood Testing

U.S. scientists have developed a tiny diagnostic device for use on the battle field to test soldiers for exposure to biological or chemical weapons.

By tweaking the design of a tiny pump, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies say they have taken a major step toward making an existing lab on a chip fully portable and capable of performing hundreds of chemical experiments in any setting.

Within the lab on a chip, biological fluids such as blood are pumped through channels about 10 microns wide; a red blood cell is about 8 microns in diameter. Each channel has its own pumps, which direct the fluids to certain areas of the chip so they can be tested for the presence of specific molecules.

The chips are so small and cheap to make they could be designed to be disposable or even made implantable, said Martin Bazant, associate professor of applied mathematics and leader of the research team.

Bazant, with graduate student J.P. Urbanski and post doctoral associate Jeremy Levitan, will present the research in an upcoming edition of the journal Applied Physics Letters.