Automated liquid operation method for microfluidic heterogeneous immunoassay

In this work, an automated liquid operation method for multistep heterogeneous immunoassay toward point of care testing (POCT) was proposed. A miniaturized peristaltic pump was developed to control the flow direction, flow time and flow rate in the microliter range according to a program. The peristaltic pump has the advantages of simple structure, small size, low cost, and easy to build and use. By coupling the peristaltic pump with an antibody-coated capillary and a reagent-preloaded cartridge, the complicated liquid handling operation for heterogeneous immunoassay, including sample metering and introduction, multistep reagent introduction and rinsing, could be triggered by an action and accomplished automatically in 12 min. The analytical performance of the present immunoassay system was demonstrated in the measurement of human IgG with fluorescence detection. A detection limit of 0.68 μg/mL IgG and a dynamic range of 2–300 μg/mL were obtained.