A Microfluidic System for Continuous Platelet Separation and Concentration for Analytic and Preparative Purposes

Project Goal: Develop a point-of-care system for portable, cost-effective and rapid platelet separation and concentration for analytic and preparative purposes.

ThromboSpiral is a portable and rapid microfluidic system for platelet separation and concentration in a clinical setting. It provides point-of-care analysis of platelet health in patients at risk of blood clots due to cardiac devices.

The system consists of three distinct modules. The first component separates platelets from whole blood using a compact centrifuge constructed from a disk drive, 3D-printed rotor and siphoning cap. The siphoning cap automatically removes the separated platelet-rich plasma from the other blood components and deposits it into 10mL chromatography columns for the gel filtration of platelets.

Once separated, the platelets are passed through shear-simulating microfluidic channels, which activate the platelets within predefined ranges of shear to simulate conditions found in common cardiac devices. Finally, these activated platelets pass through a second microfluidic chip that immobilizes fluorescently tagged platelets to be identified using a custom fluorescence detection device.