Biochips: A New Step in the Future of Biotechnology

Biochips are essentially miniaturized laboratories that can perform hundreds or thousands of simultaneous biochemical reactions. Biochips enable researchers to quickly screen large numbers of biological analytes for a variety of purposes, from disease diagnosis to detection of bioterrorism agents.

Digital microfluidic biochips have become one of the most promising technologies in many biomedical fields. In a digital microfluidic biochip, a group of (adjacent) cells in the microfluidic array can be configured to work as storage, functional operations, as well as for transporting fluid droplets dynamically.

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In the future, biochips will become widely available to the public.

"Like smartphones, biochips will be used by people on a daily basis to check their health or nutritional status," said Lee. "In the same way that smartphones have shifted the paradigm for information flow, smart biochips will play a key role in revolutionizing the system for the acquisition and interpretation of Mother Nature's information flow."

Microarrays are not limited to DNA analysis; protein microarrays, antibody microarray, chemical compound microarray can also be produced using biochips. Randox Laboratories Ltd. launched Evidence, the first protein Biochip Array Technology analyzer in 2003. In protein Biochip Array Technology, the biochip replaces the ELISA plate or cuvette as the reaction platform. The biochip is used to simultaneously analyze a panel of related tests in a single sample, producing a patient profile.

The patient profile can be used in disease screening, diagnosis, monitoring disease progression or monitoring treatment. Performing multiple analyses simultaneously, described as multiplexing, allows a significant reduction in processing time and the amount of patient sample required.

Biochip Array Technology is a novel application of a familiar methodology, using sandwich, competitive and antibody-capture immunoassays. The difference from conventional immunoassays is that, the capture ligands are covalently attached to the surface of the biochip in an ordered array rather than in solution.