Better prepared

Researchers at

in California have developed an enhancement to a well known “force phenomenon” called dielectrophoresis that they say could revolutionise the way biological sample preparation is conducted. Sandia is actively seeking commercial partners to help bring the technology to the marketplace.

Known as an insulator-based dielectrophoretic device (iDEP), the new tool developed at Sandia quickly and selectively concentrates live pathogenic bacteria within large water samples. The technology development was internally funded through the Laboratory-Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program.

iDEP can deliver detectable amounts of material in small sample volumes, eliminating any need for overnight culturing and significantly speeding up water analysis. In addition to water analysis, Sandia researchers say the technology may have applications beneficial to other industries.

“Medical diagnostics applications might include enabling detection of diseases that produce anomalous cell morphology, such as cancer, sickle cell anaemia, and leukaemia,” said Carrie Burchard, a business development manager at Sandia. “In laboratories, iDEP could contribute to differential sorting of live and dead cells in cell culturing, and allow for protein isolation and concentration, sample concentration and focusing, analytical chemistry, and mass spectrometry for proteomics and drug discovery,” she said.