title: Separation of carboxylic acids in human serum by isotachophoresis using a commercial field-deployable analytical platform combined with in-house glass microfluidic chips.
abstract: Portable and field deployable analytical instruments are attractive in many fields including medical diagnostics, where point of care and on-site diagnostics systems capable of providing rapid quantitative results have the potential to vastly improve the productivity and the quality of medical care. Isotachophoresis (ITP) is a well known electrophoretic separation technique previously demonstrated as suitable for miniaturization in microfluidic chip format (chip-ITP). In this work, a purpose-designed ITP chip compatible with a commercial end-used targeted microfluidic system was used to study different injection protocols and to evaluate the effect of the length of the separation channel on the analytical performance. The in-house ITP chips were made from Corning glass and compared to the commercial DNA chip for the ITP separation of anions from the hydrodynamic injection of human serum. Using the in-house ITP chip the isotachophoretic step of lactate from human serum was approximately two times longer. The results of this research suggested that microfluidic ITP with indirect fluorescence detection is a viable technique for separation of organic acids in human serum samples, especially when a chip with suitable design is used.
authors.affiliation: University of Tasmania, ACROSS and School of Chemistry, Hobart, Australia.
authors.forename: Petr
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Smejkal
authors.forename: Michael C
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Breadmore
authors.forename: Rosanne M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Guijt
authors.forename: Jakub
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Grym
authors.forename: František
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Foret
authors.forename: Fritz
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Bek
authors.forename: Mirek
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Macka
mesh_terms: D020155:3-Hydroxybutyric Acid / Q000097:blood; D002264:Carboxylic Acids / Q000032:analysis* / Q000097:blood; D002623:Chemistry Techniques, Analytical / Q000295:instrumentation*; D005453:Fluorescence; D005898:Glass / Q000737:chemistry; D006801:Humans; D057625:Isotachophoresis / Q000295:instrumentation; D019344:Lactic Acid / Q000097:blood; D044085:Microfluidics / Q000295:instrumentation; D019289:Pyruvic Acid / Q000097:blood; D012015:Reference Standards; D044967:Serum / Q000737:chemistry*
chemical_list: D002264:Carboxylic Acids; D019344:Lactic Acid; D019289:Pyruvic Acid; D020155:3-Hydroxybutyric Acid