Next Generation Lab-On-a-Chip For Advanced Diagnostics.
The FET Innovation LAUNCHPAD PiLOC is an EU-funded project for the development of a novel technology for the seamless integration of valves, pumps, injectors made with piezoelectric thin films onto polymer microfluidic chips, thus leading to the next generation low-cost and high-performance LOC (Lab-On-Chip systems).
The FET Innovation LAUNCHPAD PiLOC is an EU-funded project for the development of a novel technology for the seamless integration of valves, pumps, injectors made with piezoelectric thin films onto polymer microfluidic chips, thus leading to the next generation low-cost and high-performance LOC (Lab-On-Chip systems).
Microfluidics technology has revolutionised key applications like drug development, stem cell research, microbiological analysis, medical diagnosis, personalised medicine and chemical biology, just to name but a few. Microfluidic systems are always more present in chemistry and biochemistry labs, driving the development of new components and processes for the injection, mixing, pumping, and storing of fluids in the microchannels.
In this way, the progress of microfluidics technology has opened a completely new market for Lab-On-Chip systems (LOC), which are miniaturised devices intended to replicate what happens in a real lab, drastically improving cost efficiency, parallelization, ergonomics, diagnostic speed and sensitivity.
Considering that the largest majority of microfluidic chips is made of glass or silicon due to the mature manufacturing process and excellent optical properties, surface stability, solvent compatibility, one question is puzzling the LOC industry: how to deal with the increased complexity of systems?
In fact, the need for high speed, flexible, multiparametric systems are challenging the technological and cost constraints. Indeed, an increasing number of discrete components like actuators and valves can be implemented on glass, but who is willing to spend up to 500€ for a disposable chip?
The latter is the driving force towards the research of LOC based on polymer chips, that not only have most advantages of glass chips like transparency, electrical insulation, biocompatibility but are fast and cost effective to fabricate in large volumes.
Unfortunately, while microfluidic channels can be easily manufactured with polymers, active components like actuators and valves integration are an unsolved issue, as their full integration with polymers would take place at processing temperature far beyond the melting point of polymers, and the only way to have such components in a LOC is by gluing them, which is totally unreproducible and leading to unreliable outcomes.
Microfluidics technology has revolutionised key applications like drug development, stem cell research, microbiological analysis, medical diagnosis, personalised medicine and chemical biology, just to name but a few.
Microfluidic systems are ever more present in chemistry and biochemistry labs, driving the development of new components and processes for the injection, mixing, pumping, and storing of fluids in the microchannels.
As such, the progress of microfluidics technology has opened a completely new market for Lab-On-Chip systems (LOC), which are miniaturised devices intended to replicate experiments normally carried out in a real lab, drastically improving cost efficiency, parallelization, ergonomics, diagnostic speed and sensitivity.
Using the piezoelectric effect in microfluidics is not recent. There are several publications in which a piezoelectric bulk ceramic is glued to a microfluidic chip.1 The problem with such an approach is that the performance of the system is not reproducible and depends on the gluing quality. In addition, bulk ceramics need high driving voltages, which is a critical disadvantage compared to non-piezo-based components. Both above-mentioned limitations will be resolved by using piezoelectric thin films deposited directly on microfluidic chips.
Microfluidics is a huge and expanding market, growing at one of the fastest rates in the biotech domain. Indeed, it is expected to move from the current around 15B€ to more than 40B€ by 2025, marking a 22.9% Compound Annual Growth Rate.
Precision medicine, advanced diagnostics (for instance, the fastest COVID-19 tests are based on microfluidic devices), point of care testing and utmost portability are the propelling factors of this market. Besides, there are several applications that are predicted to further boost the popularity of LOC, such as microfluidics-based 3D cell culture systems, organ-on-a-chip and novel drug delivery technologies.
That’s why, decades after its inception, the microfluidics market has not reached tipping point.
Development of the technology has been quite rapid, but its adoption for biological research has not kept pace.
This is largely because the fabrication of these devices is challenging, leading to scalable production at an acceptable
price just out of reach. This is due to the fact that the already complex submillimitre scale pipes integrate many laboratory functions as filters or valves or other components, which leads to up to six layers to be stacked together.
With the PiLOC technology we foresee a possible reduction of the manufacturing cost down to few €cent per chip against current 2€-5€ for low-end disposable devices, and in the range of 5€-10€/chip for high-end systems which will replace best in class 500 €/chip silicon LOC.
Cost-effective, high-performance diagnostic methods are vital to providing citizens with accessible, affordable, and high-quality healthcare in both developed and developing countries.
However, while the top killers in developed countries are non-communicable diseases like heart disease and cancer, the leading cause of death in developing countries are infectious diseases, the majority of which could be prevented with proper diagnosis and treatment.
That’s why microfluidics has long been seen as a way to revolutionize the healthcare industry especially in developing countries since it would bring portable, easy-to-use, self-contained diagnostic devices to places with limited access to healthcare. To date, however, microfluidics has not yet been able to live up to these expectations. The widespread access to low-cost diagnostic tools for lower respiratory infections, HIV/AIDS, malaria, measles, tuberculosis and syphilis would drastically improve life-expectancy in developing countries, but while diagnostic platforms have been demonstrated on LOC, in practice these on-chip processes are not possible without the support of bulky and expensive external components, such as pumps and switches for fluid actuation and optical detectors for signal measurement.
PiLOC will allow the implementation of simplified microfluidics to make microfluidic-based systems more practical. Besides, microfluidics is seen as a crucial tool to fight COVID-19, with the promise to realise near-instant portable point-of-care testing, creating a valuable alternative to benchtop assays such as real-time RT-PCR that are currently being used.
Microfluidics is a huge and expanding market, growing at one of the fastest rates in the biotech domain. Indeed, it is expected to move from the current around 15B€ to more than 40B€ by 2025, marking a 22.9% Compound Annual Growth Rate.
Precision medicine, advanced diagnostics (for instance, the fastest COVID-19 tests are based on microfluidic devices), point of care testing and utmost portability are the propelling factors of this market. Besides, there are several applications that are predicted to further boost the popularity of LOC, such as microfluidics-based 3D cell culture systems, organ-on-a-chip and novel drug delivery technologies.
That’s why, decades after its inception, the microfluidics market has not reached tipping point.
Development of the technology has been quite rapid, but its adoption for biological research has not kept pace.
This is largely because the fabrication of these devices is challenging, leading to scalable production at an acceptable
price just out of reach. This is due to the fact that the already complex submillimitre scale pipes integrate many laboratory functions as filters or valves or other components, which leads to up to six layers to be stacked together.
With the PiLOC technology we foresee a possible reduction of the manufacturing cost down to few €cent per chip against current 2€-5€ for low-end disposable devices, and in the range of 5€-10€/chip for high-end systems which will replace best in class 500 €/chip silicon LOC.
The challenge is to have a pump system that is small enough not to be visible under the clothes of the user, smart enough to be able to administer the correct injections at the appropriate times and precise enough to yield a fine control as well as a correct mixing ratio of particularly the insulin and amylin.
In short, the achievement of a multi-hormone closed-loop system requires two innovations:
Cost-effective, high-performance diagnostic methods are vital to providing citizens with accessible, affordable, and high-quality healthcare in both developed and developing countries.
However, while the top killers in developed countries are non-communicable diseases like heart disease and cancer, the leading cause of death in developing countries are infectious diseases, the majority of which could be prevented with proper diagnosis and treatment.
That’s why microfluidics has long been seen as a way to revolutionize the healthcare industry especially in developing countries since it would bring portable, easy-to-use, self-contained diagnostic devices to places with limited access to healthcare. To date, however, microfluidics has not yet been able to live up to these expectations. The widespread access to low-cost diagnostic tools for lower respiratory infections, HIV/AIDS, malaria, measles, tuberculosis and syphilis would drastically improve life-expectancy in developing countries, but while diagnostic platforms have been demonstrated on LOC, in practice these on-chip processes are not possible without the support of bulky and expensive external components, such as pumps and switches for fluid actuation and optical detectors for signal measurement.
PiLOC will allow the implementation of simplified microfluidics to make microfluidic-based systems more practical. Besides, microfluidics is seen as a crucial tool to fight COVID-19, with the promise to realise near-instant portable point-of-care testing, creating a valuable alternative to benchtop assays such as real-time RT-PCR that are currently being used.
At Piemacs, a high tech startup company stemming from the pioneering research activities carried out at the EPFL’s Muralt’s lab, we propose a novel technology for the seamless integration of valves, pumps, injectors made with piezoelectric thin films onto polymer microfluidic chips, thus leading to the next generation low-cost and high performance LOC.
This will allow monolithic fabrication of LOC using MEMS technology, benefiting from the advancements in MEMS manufacturing and the facilities available at EPFL. In the FET-OPEN BioWings the Consortium is developing a piezoelectric thin film to be used as an actuator material. As muscles, Piezoelectric thin films can produce force (or displacement) as function of applied electric filed.
In fact, in the Biowings project the industrial goal is to realise a vibrating membrane that emits ultrasound waves, using the piezoelectric effect, into a glass microfluidic channel. During the research work, we realised that the process conditions exist to explore possibility of integrating piezoelectric thin films in polymers instead of glass, paving the way to a completely new and revolutionary application, which can potentially reduce the manufacturing cost of advanced microfluidic chips by two orders of magnitude, moving from hundreds of €/chip of most advanced Si-glass chips to few € of fully integrated polymer chips.
This would further boost the adoption of LOC devices in research and clinical practice, also favouring the roll-out in regions of the world where fast and reliable microfluidic diagnostic tests are still not economically viable.
The BioWings FET-Open project focuses on the development of biocompatible electrostrictive materials for biomedical applications, through the use of ceria based thin films to be used in both the low and high frequency range. The project pursues the integration of piezoelectric thin films on glass substrates, which would represent a breakthrough in many applications. During the project activity, through a “market pull” approach starting from real needs expressed by the stakeholders we have approached, it emerged that a huge market opportunity exists for the integration of piezoelectric materials on polymers, which would open up a completely new avenue for advanced low-cost microfluidic chips.
This represents an original result owned by Piemacs, which will not be directly developed within the BioWings project as out of the project scope. At the same time, if the technological and business viability are confirmed in this Launchpad project, Piemacs will move on with the technology development and fundraising together with Day One, creating a new market opportunity for the company’s IP.
The project is coordinated by Piemacs, a high tech startup specialised in providing innovative solutions for piezoelectric MEMS engineering services to large corporates and SMEs. Piemacs is the owner of the IP and is now strategically focusing on scaling up their business, by exploiting the results generated in the BioWings project. To do this, they will be supported by Day One, partner and Exploitation Manager of the BioWings project.
Day One is a Startup Studio specialised in launching and supporting high tech startups together with European researchers, having launched and supported more than 60 European startups in the last 5 years. The synergy between the two partners will lead to follow a User Centered Design product development roadmap, with D1 focused on grouping the necessary stakeholders and collect requirements/specifications and market insights and Piemacs validating the process capacity to reach such performance targets.
The activities of this FET Launchpad will be carried out by two partners of the BioWings FET-OPEN project, which will take care of the technological (PIEMACS) and business feasibility (Day One) respectively.
Day One will carry out a Stakeholder analysis to validate the main expected performances, requirements and perceived limitations of state of the art LOCs, which will be used by PIEMACS to make a list of target performance for the PiLOC process.
To collect requirements and specifications from a set of industrial stakeholders and provide the R&D team with targets to be reached to prove the viability of the process. Besides, the potential market will be assessed and the business plan prepared to pave the way to the industrialisation phase.
The successful outcome of the technological and business feasibility will allow PIEMACS to design the product development roadmap, which will consist in a detailed Work Breakdown Structure to reach TRL9, together with the identification of the internal and external resources needed, the timeframe and the budget required.
Day One
Business Strategy
Piemacs
Technical Manager
Day One
Business Strategy
Piemacs
Technical Manager
PILOC
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.
Grant agreement ID: 101034919