An automated point-of-care instrument for molecular testing

A self-contained cartridge and an integrated instrument for the automated molecular testing are described. The proposed cylindrical cartridge consists of multiple chambers containing all necessary reagents such as specimens, lysis, wash, and elution buffers. The system provides a chain of automatic processes for the molecular test of sample preparation, amplification, and detection. Sample preparation can be fully conducted inside the cartridge, which includes reagents mixing, nucleic acids capturing, wastes-out, and eluates collection. The system also implements the amplifying and detecting processes of the extracted DNA using the peltier heating and photometry scanner, respectively. All flow movements in the instrument are driven by pneumatic actuations of syringe/piston sets and valve controls based on the motor driving. The molecular tests in the system were evaluated clinically using Salmonella bacteria. The performance of the system was verified successfully by comparing with the results from commercial equipment. The system including the disposable cartridge has the potentials to be applicable for point-of-care testing of molecular diagnostics such as Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) or other amplification methods such as isothermal amplification, resulting in an early diagnosis of disease.