title: Design and development of a microarray processing station (MPS) for automated miniaturized immunoassays.
abstract: Here we describe the design and evaluation of a fluidic device for the automatic processing of microarrays, called microarray processing station or MPS. The microarray processing station once installed on a commercial microarrayer allows automating the washing, and drying steps, which are often performed manually. The substrate where the assay occurs remains on place during the microarray printing, incubation and processing steps, therefore the addressing of nL volumes of the distinct immunoassay reagents such as capture and detection antibodies and samples can be performed on the same coordinate of the substrate with a perfect alignment without requiring any additional mechanical or optical re-alignment methods. This allows the performance of independent immunoassays in a single microarray spot.
authors.affiliation: Nanobioengineering Laboratory, Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), Baldiri Reixac, 10-12, 08028, Barcelona, Spain. mpla@ibecbarcelona.eu.
authors.forename: Mateu
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Pla-Roca
authors.affiliation: Nanobioengineering Laboratory, Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), Baldiri Reixac, 10-12, 08028, Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: Gizem
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Altay
authors.affiliation: Robotics Laboratory, Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), Baldiri Reixac, 10-12, 08028, Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: Xavier
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Giralt
authors.affiliation: Robotics Laboratory, Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), Baldiri Reixac, 10-12, 08028, Barcelona, Spain.|Center of Research in Biomedical Engineering, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Jordi Girona, 1-3, 08034, Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: Alícia
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Casals
authors.affiliation: Nanobioengineering Laboratory, Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), Baldiri Reixac, 10-12, 08028, Barcelona, Spain.|The Biomedical Research Networking Center in Bioengineering, Biomaterials and Nanomedicine (CIBER-BBN), Maria de Luna, 11, 50018, Zaragoza, Spain.|Department of Engineering: Electronics, University of Barcelona (UB), Martí i Franquès, 1, 08028, Barcelona, Spain.
authors.forename: Josep
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Samitier
mesh_terms: D004867:Equipment Design; D007118:Immunoassay / Q000379:methods*; D040081:Protein Array Analysis / Q000379:methods*
keywords: Automation; Customization; High-throughput screening; Immunoassays; Microarrays