(449ck) Membrane-Based, Simple Filtration Device for Rapid Separation of Biological Particles from Complex Matrices

Despite recent developments in polymerase chain reaction (PCR) based assays for identification of infectious diseases, there is still a need for the development of novel viral sample preparation techniques from blood samples for improved detection and identification of rare biological particles. Conventional laboratory diagnostics based on culture or molecular methods need prolonged assay time, complex processing by skilled technicians using costly, large-scale instrumentations in centralized laboratories. This can lead to physicians making treatment decisions based on an incomplete diagnosis contributing to patient morbidity. Ideally a diagnostic platform should be simple, rapid, and reliable that can be processed by non-technical staff even in non-hospital based settings where immediate clinical decision-making can be life-saving. Thus, rapid and reliable detection of bloodstream infections will gain a lot from improved and straightforward isolation of highly purified virus from all blood.

In this discussion, we demonstrate a simple viral or bacterial purification/concentration device that is easy to use, is reliable, and requires no energy for rapid viral separation. The device is comprised of two chambers, a feed chamber and a viral concentration chamber. Each chamber, which are 20 ml in volume, is divided with a poly (ethylene glycol) methacrylate (PEGMA) functionalized membrane to prevent membrane fouling and clogging. High water flux is maintained through driving forces from the packed polymer hydrogels in the concentration chamber and through gravitational pull. Filtration experiments with different sizes of colored-dye particles indicated that the device can exclusively separate small nanoparticles from large particles in mixture with a high filtration rate, up to 1.3 ml/min. In addition, the test results with dengue virus showed high filtration efficiency of the device with 90% of viral particle recovery and a concentration factor of 4.5. Our results suggest that the filtration device may provide a breakthrough toward the development of simple diagnostic platform for rapid detection of bloodstream infections, polymerase chain reaction sample preparation, and viral separation/concentration.