State Key Laboratory of Applied Optics, Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics (CIOMP), Chinese Academy of Sciences, China.

Speech Title: Novel microfabrication methodology for self-powered and continuous flow on-chip PCR
Abstract: Traditional PCRs were run by giant-sized thermal cyclers, requiring time-consuming and laborious machinery handling. Over the last decade, a lot of efforts have been made to develop improved microfluidic PCR systems. In most cases, complicated and giant accessories are indispensable in functionalizing PCR microfluidic devices, which in return increases systemic complexity as well as operational cost are still required for on-chip micro-continuous PCRs. When multi-heaters are utilized, the pumping system is necessary in motivating sample transport between several fixed temperatures for DNA annealing, extension and denaturing. Although a single heater with cycling temperature can waive the reliance on the pumping system, this type of heater is much more complicated than the aforementioned multi-heaters concerning systemic control and device assembly. Furthermore, microchip material is another integral issue that should be taken into account in the design of microfluidic PCR systems. PDMS seems to be a good candidate for microfabrication, because wide range of materials can be easily bonded with PDMS.1
In the light of our recent achievements, we have introduced systemic methods for constructing commercially significant microfluidic PCR systems.2
As for microfluidic PCRs, our methods are capable of suppressing the bubble problem without any laborious operations or additional reagents; allowing temperature cycling by a single-temperature heater instead of multi-temperature heaters;3 and waiving the usage of any outer microfluidic pump for stable sample transport. Through waiving the complex accessories needed in previous methods, all instruments needed to run PCRs here can be simplified to only one one-off syringe, one coin-sized PCR chip, and one commercial (portable) heater. Different DNA targets from wide range of samples including single hair (DIS 80), human genomic DNA (oncogenes) and bacterial (E. coil) plasmid vectors can be successfully amplified with the practical microfluidic PCR devices described here, with amplification efficiency comparable to that of the traditional thermal-cycler. Through simplifying on-chip sample DNA amplification process, time-consuming and labor-intensive operations are eliminated, paving the way for constructing a totally self-integrated lab-on-a-chip PCR system with great potential for wide use in commerce and minimized POC for global health care.
References: [1] W. Wu, J Wu, J. H. Kima and N. Y. Lee, Lab on a Chip, 2015, 15, 2819-2825.
[2] W. Wu, K. T. L. Trinh and N. Y. Lee, Analyst, 2015,140, 1416-1420.