title: Enhancing malaria diagnosis through microfluidic cell enrichment and magnetic resonance relaxometry detection.
abstract: Despite significant advancements over the years, there remains an urgent need for low cost diagnostic approaches that allow for rapid, reliable and sensitive detection of malaria parasites in clinical samples. Our previous work has shown that magnetic resonance relaxometry (MRR) is a potentially highly sensitive tool for malaria diagnosis. A key challenge for making MRR based malaria diagnostics suitable for clinical testing is the fact that MRR baseline fluctuation exists between individuals, making it difficult to detect low level parasitemia. To overcome this problem, it is important to establish the MRR baseline of each individual while having the ability to reliably determine any changes that are caused by the infection of malaria parasite. Here we show that an approach that combines the use of microfluidic cell enrichment with a saponin lysis before MRR detection can overcome these challenges and provide the basis for a highly sensitive and reliable diagnostic approach of malaria parasites. Importantly, as little as 0.0005% of ring stage parasites can be detected reliably, making this ideally suited for the detection of malaria parasites in peripheral blood obtained from patients. The approaches used here are envisaged to provide a new malaria diagnosis solution in the near future.
authors.affiliation: 1] School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore [2] BioSystems and Micromechanics (BioSyM) IRG, Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) Centre, 1 Create Way, #03 Enterprise Wing, Singapore.
authors.forename: Tian Fook
authors.initials: TF
authors.lastname: Kong
authors.affiliation: 1] School of Biological Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, 60 Nanyang Drive, Singapore [2] Infectious Diseases IRG (ID), Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) Centre, 1 Create Way, #03 Enterprise Wing, Singapore.
authors.forename: Weijian
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Ye
authors.affiliation: BioSystems and Micromechanics (BioSyM) IRG, Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) Centre, 1 Create Way, #03 Enterprise Wing, Singapore.
authors.forename: Weng Kung
authors.initials: WK
authors.lastname: Peng
authors.affiliation: Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, Nanyang Technological University, 11 Mandalay Road, Singapore.
authors.forename: Han Wei
authors.initials: HW
authors.lastname: Hou
authors.affiliation: School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore.
authors.lastname: Marcos
authors.affiliation: 1] School of Biological Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, 60 Nanyang Drive, Singapore [2] Infectious Diseases IRG (ID), Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) Centre, 1 Create Way, #03 Enterprise Wing, Singapore.
authors.forename: Peter Rainer
authors.initials: PR
authors.lastname: Preiser
authors.affiliation: Queensland Micro- and Nanotechnology Centre, Griffith University, 170 Kessels Road, QLD 4111, Australia.
authors.forename: Nam-Trung
authors.initials: NT
authors.lastname: Nguyen
authors.affiliation: 1] BioSystems and Micromechanics (BioSyM) IRG, Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) Centre, 1 Create Way, #03 Enterprise Wing, Singapore [2] Department of Electrical Engineering &Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Room 36-841, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA, USA [3] Department of Biological Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA.
authors.forename: Jongyoon
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Han
mesh_terms: D016022:Case-Control Studies; D004912:Erythrocytes / Q000469:parasitology; D006801:Humans; D009682:Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy / Q000379:methods*; D008288:Malaria / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000469:parasitology*; D044085:Microfluidics / Q000379:methods*; D018512:Parasitemia; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity