High speed nanofluidic protein accumulator

Highly efficient preconcentration is a crucial prerequisite to the identification of important protein biomarkers with extremely low abundance in target biofluids. In this work, poly(dimethylsiloxane) microchips integrated with 10 nm polycarbonate nanopore membranes were utilized as high-speed protein accumulators. Double-sided injection control of electrokinetic fluid flow in the sample channel resulted in highly localized protein accumulation at a very sharp point in the channel cross point. This greatly enhanced the ability to detect very low levels of initial protein concentration. Fluorescein labeled human serum albumin solutions of 30 and 300 pM accumulated to 3 and 30 microM in only 100 s. Initial solutions as low as 0.3 and 3 pM could be concentrated within 200 s to 0.3 and 3 microM, respectively. This demonstrates a approximately 10(5)-10(6) accumulation factor, and an accumulation rate as high as 5000/sec, yielding a >10x improvement over most results reported to date.