From the workshop to the clinic: The journey towards in-situ Microfluidics

The flow of circulating nucleic acids (cfNA) in circulation provides a unique opportunity towards the development of diagnostic techniques to identify gestational diseases, cancer and other disorders. However, the requirement of specialist and costly equipment limits the broad implementation of existing techniques. Microfluidics, the precise manipulation of fluid at the microscale, is an enabling technology which may overcome some of the current challenges and deliver faster results at a cheaper cost. This talk will discuss the need for near-patient tools in various clinical situations and the advances of my group in this regards, and in particular how we have taken our microfluidic devices closer to real-life clinical setting.