NTU Singapore scientists invent coin-sized device to isolate blood plasma
New device rapidly isolates blood plasma for diagnostics and precision medicine
26 Mar 2024
NTU scientists have developed ExoArc, a coin-sized chip device that can directly isolate blood plasma from a tube of blood in just 30 minutes, which is more convenient and user-friendly when compared to the current gold standard, multi-step centrifugation process.
With just a single step, ExoArc can achieve high blood plasma purity by removing more than 99.9% of blood cells and platelets precisely and gently, which will greatly speed up clinical analysis and screening for biomarkers that are tell-tale signs specific to certain cancers and diseases.
As a proof-of-concept, the team built a portable prototype device to house the ExoArc chip, which has a large touch-screen interface to adjust settings, as well as internal pumps and piping for the processing of blood samples and collection of the isolated blood plasma.
Together with clinician-scientists from the National Cancer Centre Singapore (NCCS), Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH), and the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), the team clinically validated ExoArc by analysing the microRNA profile of blood plasma in healthy people and cancer patients using a biomarker panel and found it was able to diagnose non-small cell lung cancer with high accuracy.
In another practical use-case application for precision medicine, the purified blood plasma can also be used to screen and differentiate healthy individuals from those with type 2 diabetes.
ExoArc currently has two patent applications filed through NTUitive, NTU’s innovation and enterprise company and its study findings have been published recently in ACS Nano, a journal under the American Chemical Society.
The development of ExoArc is backed by a Proof-of-Concept and Proof-of-Value grant from the NTUitive Gap Fund, under the NTU Innovation and Entrepreneurship initiative.