Smart precision fluidics for genomics

Abstract

Innovations in genomics are changing the way we look at diseases from flu to cancer. Today's techniques often rely on manual sample preparation with different instruments operated by well-trained users. This limits the accuracy, speed and cost effectiveness, which hampers its wide-spread adoption, such as diagnostics at home. It will be critical to fully automate these steps and integrate the sample prep flow, i.e. sample-to-answer in a single device.  

This integrated approach can be achieved with smart precision fluidics, with micro sensors & actuators in silicon, fluidic channels in glass and packaged in plastic, depending on the need for high-precision structures. Think for example of a plastic channel with a silicon PCR chamber.  

In this webinar, we share our in-house expertise on smart precision fluidics. The high-precision possibilities of lithography and microfabrication will be described, as well as specific structures that imec has developed for an integrated sample preparation flow. For example: micro-pillar mediated filters, sieves, extraction devices, pumps and valves, sensors, microscopes, electrical sample prep devices, cell and droplet sorters (for cfDNA, single-cell sequencing and barcoding).