Q Chip has developed the MicroPlant, a microfluidics-based device which enables the precise encapsulation of aqueous molecular biology reagents within re-dissolvable polymer microspheres.
Its hydrogel encapsulation technology offers benefits compared with conventional reagent lyophilisation, such as ultra-low wastage, uniform dosing & morphology and low process costs, the company says.
MicroPlant's ability to encapsulate highly accurate reagent quantities has a variety of applications in molecular biology processes, ranging from food pathogen detection to real time PCR and viral-load quantification. The new system allows both large and small volumes of solutions to be accurately aliquoted into sub-nanolitre droplets, which are converted to polymer beads.
The bead size variation is frequently less than 1%, which means extremely low assay variability. The platform is fully scalable, and able to produce batches as small as 1000 beads but also up to 15 million x 96 well plates annually. Each encapsulation procedure may be performed under optimum thermal conditions, ranging from +200°C to -30°C. However, in the context of molecular reagent encapsulation, temperatures of 5-37°C are most applicable.