Eman

• What disease might you want your device to be able to diagnose?
  • How about rather than testing for a particular disease, we test for a particular quality to see if it’s normal or not.
    • Can test for multiple diseases in the same category at once
• Want to test something that will be visible in a blood sample
• What are some things that are visible in blood?
  • Blood cell count
  • Tumor markers
  • Proteins
  • Hemoglobin
  • Red blood cells
  • White blood cells
  • Platelets
  • Iron-deficiencies
  • Cholesterol
  • Many other things
    • Will want to choose something that interests all group members; once that is done, we will want to research how they appear in the blood/how to measure them, what the normal ranges/characteristics are, and how to get our device to measure that particular quality.
• What type of analyte will your device assess?
  • Depends on what we decide to measure/test for
  • Most of the things I’ve listed above measure a range/number
    • Will want to have the device recognize what a protein is, or whatever it is that we test for, and then have a counter to keep track of how many/much there is
    • Could be shape, DNA, cell surface proteins, patterns, variability in structure, structure in general, or any number of things

• How will the patient blood sample and reagents be loaded into the NANOLYSER?
  • I would think that we would want to do something similar to micro
    • Have a channel that the sample goes into
    • All of the different parts of the chip that need some of the sample can just be connected to the larger channel
    • Maybe we could just place a drop somewhere onto the chip
    • Dip the chip into the sample

• How will samples and reagents be moved around in the NANOLYSER?
  • Again, I think something similar to micro
    • Use flow
      • Have a channel that all of the different chambers of the chip are attached to
      • Insert the sample into the channel
      • As the sample flows, it will go into the different chambers
    • Or we can manually insert and take out the sample from the different parts of the chip

• Will you isolate the target analyte from the other blood components? Or will you analyze directly from whole blood? Thoughts on how and/or why?
  • Isolating target analyte vs Whole Blood
    • If we go with the test for irregularities rather than a particular disease idea, then it will be better to analyze directly from whole blood
    • It will probably be easier to analyze directly from whole blood
    • Since we are super inexperienced in targeting analytes, room for error will be much greater than just analyzing directly from whole blood
    • Isolating a target analyte will probably take more time than just analyzing from whole blood
    • I just want to analyze directly from whole blood because I think it will be easier

• What might be some of the different processing steps your device will need to be able to perform?
  • Cell separation
  • Cell labeling
  • Protein labeling
  • DNA labeling
  • Cell counting
  • Structure identification
  • Chemical identification
  • Structure counting
  • Chemical measurements
• Will these be performed in the same location on the chip or in different chambers?
  • Will probably want to perform them in different chambers because the results will be more organized if everything is already separated into its specific category
    • This will probably lead to a slightly larger chip

• How will the results be read or detected to determine the diagnosis given by your device?
• Not really sure what this question means.
  • How will the device read the sample or how will the user read the results?
    • Given:
      • Fluorescence reader
      • Electrical signal
      • Chemical change
    • Ideas:
      • Maybe we can connect the chip to a Proteus and have the Proteus display the results
      • Could do the same thing with a computer
        • Then we would have to develop a code, which would probably take a really long time
      • We could develop a program to graph the results and the expected results, highlighting areas of concern
      • Can have the chip add something to the sample to show that it passes with flying colors or is in the danger zone
      • Send samples to different part of the chip according to whether or not they are healthy

• Disposable vs Reusable
• Disposable:
  • Pros
    • It’s okay if our design is crummy because we’ll be making another one
    • Can test a variety of different designs
    • Can slightly alter the same design to test for different aspects/different diseases
    • Won’t be as big of a deal if one teammate messes everything up on accident (I tend to be that teammate).
  • Cons
    • Could take a lot of time to make the designs
    • Would use up more materials/cost more money
    • Could have confounding variables when comparing results between the same disease that’s being tested for in multiple designs
• Reusable:
  • Pros
    • Won’t have to come up with multiple designs
    • Won’t have to waste time/money for new designs to be made
    • There will be consistency in testing
    • Will be built to withstand time, so can be used to demo future classes
  • Cons
    • If the design sucks, we are stuck with a crummy LOC
    • Can’t really change the chip once it’s made
    • Will have to either allow for multiple areas of testing in the design, or be stuck with only testing one thing