Other Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering Commons^™

Detecting Viral Particles In Vitro Using Photoacoustic Flow Cytometry, Anie-Pier Samson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Covid-19 pandemic is a powerful example of just how damaging the rapid spread of an unknown virus can be. Viruses have the ability to spread rapidly amongst individuals if not treated and controlled. The first key step towards treatment is the timely and specific diagnosis of the virus causing the infection. An innovative method for the rapid detection of viral particles in solution consists of tagging the viral particles paired with using photoacoustic flow cytometry to irradiate the particles and get a signal. The high affinity of Streptavidin for Biotin can be used to bind Streptavidin-coated microspheres to biotinylated …

Single-Cell Impedance Spectroscopy, David Paul Lange

Master's Theses

Impedance spectroscopy (IS) is an important tool for cell detection and characterization in medical and food safety applications. In this thesis, the Cal Poly Biofluidics Lab’s impedance spectroscopy system was re-evaluated and optimized for single-cell impedance spectroscopy. To evaluate the IS system, an impedance spectroscopy bioMEMS chip was fabricated in the Cal Poly Microfabcrication lab, software was developed to run IS experiments, and studies were run to validate the system. To explore IS optimization, Maxwell’s mixture theorem and the Schwartz-Christoffel transform were used to calculate an analytic impedance solution to the co-planar electrode system,a novel volume fraction to account for …

A Microfluidic Pretreatment Isoelectric Focusing Dc-Field Assisted H-Filter For The Separation Of Charged Particles, Cameron Sean Carroll

Biomedical Engineering

Microfluidic devices are small portable diagnostic chips that allow for analysis of a biologic sample at relatively low cost. This makes them ideal for settings where a hospital is unavailable. The microfluidic pretreatment isoelectric focusing DC-field assisted H-filter is a device that allows for the separation of differently charged particles in a biologic sample. It does this by employing the concepts of diffusion, electrophoresis, and isoelectric focusing. This is perfect for isolation of a desired analyte or separation of waste from a sample in order to achieve better diagnostic results. The device was first modeled mathematically and visually using Comsol. …

Nitrocellulose Paper Based Microfluidic Platform Development And Surface Functionalization With Anti-Ige Aptamers, Jennifer Guerin Ward

Master's Theses

The purpose of this thesis project was to demonstrate the ability to utilize the capabilities of aptamers so that they may act as capture reagents for paper microfluidic devices. Several characterization experiments were conducted as a precursor before the final experimentation was performed. Paper characterization, manufacturing protocols for printing and heating, as well as 3D chip fabrication were all performed and analyzed. The results confirmed that the control of fluid through a 3D microfluidic device based in nitrocellulose is possible.

For the biochemistry portion of this thesis report, antibodies and aptamers were chosen to react with IgE, an antibody that …