Citation

Diakite ML, Rollin J, Jary D, Berthier J, Mourton-Gilles C, Sauvaire D, Philippe C, Delapierre G, Gidrol X. Lab Chip 2015; 15(10): 2308-2317.

Affiliation

CEA, IRTSV, Biologie à Grande Echelle, 17 rue des Martyrs, F-38054, Grenoble, Cedex 9, France. Xavier.Gidrol@cea.fr.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2015, Royal Society of Chemistry)

DOI

10.1039/c5lc00178a

PMID

25892365

Abstract

A long-sought milestone in the defense against bioterrorism is the development of rapid, simple, and near-patient assays for diagnostic and theranostic purposes. Here, we present a powerful test based on a host response to a biological weapon agent, namely the ricin toxin. A signature for exposure to ricin was extracted and characterized in mice and then integrated into a plastic microfluidic cartridge. This enabled early diagnosis of exposure to ricin in mice using a drop of whole blood in less than 1 h and 30 min. The cartridge stores the reagents and implements all of the steps of the analysis, including mRNA extraction from a drop of blood, followed by tens of parallel RT-qPCR reactions. The simple and low-cost microfluidic cartridge developed here may find other applications in point-of-care diagnostics.

Language: en