
Jens DucréeDublin City University | DCU · School of Physical Sciences
Jens Ducrée
Prof. Dr. rer. nat. habil.
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466
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Introduction
The main part of Prof. Ducrée's research is directed towards novel microfluidic platforms and associated actuation, detection, fabrication and instrumentation technologies for the integration, automation, miniaturization and parallelization of sample preparation and detection of bioanalytical assays. Typical applications are sample-to-answer systems for biomedical point-of-care and global diagnostics, liquid handling automation for the life sciences, environmental monitoring and food safety.
Additional affiliations
May 2008 - February 2014
July 2005 - April 2008
July 1999 - June 2005
Publications
Publications (466)
Circulating tumor cell separation has been the focus of numerous studies owing to its importance in the diagnosis, prognosis, and therapy of cancer. This study reports a highly efficient microfluidic device that integrates a specialized dielectrophoresis configuration, namely the facing-electrode configuration dielectrophoresis (FEC-DEP) structure,...
The ability of the centrifugal Lab-on-a-Disc (LoaD) platform to closely mimic the “on bench” liquid handling steps (laboratory unit operations (LUOs)) such as metering, mixing, and aliquoting supports on-disc automation of bioassay without the need for extensive biological optimization. Thus, well-established bioassays, normally conducted manually...
Sample preparation for mass spectroscopy typically involves several liquid and solid phase clean-ups, extractions, and other unit operations, which are labour-intensive and error-prone. We demonstrate a centrifugal microfluidic platform that automates the whole blood sample’s preparation and clean-up by combining traditional liquid-phase and multip...
Due to their capability for comprehensive sample-to-answer automation, the interest in centrifugal microfluidic systems has greatly increased in industry and academia over the last quarter century. The main applications of these “Lab-on-a-Disc” (LoaD) platforms are in decentralised bioanalytical point-of-use / point-of-care testing. Due to the unid...
Atomic and close-to-atomic scale manufacturing (ACSM) is the core competence of Manufacturing III. Unlike other conceptions or terminologies that only focus on the atomic level precision, ACSM defines a new realm of manufacturing where quantum mechanics plays the dominant role in the atom/molecule addition, migration and removal, considering the un...
By virtue of its ruggedness, portability, rapid processing times, and ease-of-use, academic and commercial interest in centrifugal microfluidic systems has soared over the last decade. A key advantage of the LoaD platform is the ability to automate laboratory unit operations (LUOs) (mixing, metering, washing etc.) to support direct translation of '...
Lab-on-a-Disc (LoaD) has great potential for applications in decentralised bioanalytical testing where speed and robustness are critical. Here, a disc-shaped microfluidic chip is rotated to pump liquid radially outwards; thus, all microfluidic structures must be fitted into the available radial length. To overcome this limitation, several centripet...
The mystery about the ingenious creator of Bitcoin concealing behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto has been fascinating the global public for more than a decade. Suddenly jumping out of the dark in 2008, this persona hurled the highly disruptive distributed ledger technology "blockchain" that has added the missing native value layer to the interne...
Fundamental science and applied research and technology development (RTD) are facing significant challenges that particularly compound to the notorious credibility, reproducibility, funding and sustainability crises. The underlying, serious shortcomings are substantially amplified by a metrics-obsessed publication culture, and a growing cohort of a...
Decentralized bioanalytical testing in resource-poor settings ranks among the most common applications of microfluidic systems. The high operational autonomy in such point-of-care/point-of-use scenarios requires long-term onboard storage of liquid reagents, which also need to be safely contained during transport and handling, and then reliably rele...
In this paper, we present a centrifugal microfluidic concept employing event-triggered valving for automated extraction of metered plasma and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs). This “lab-on-a-disk” system has been developed for retrieving different density layers from a liquid column by “overflowing” the layers sequentially using the press...
Current, application-driven trends towards larger-scale integration (LSI) of microfluidic systems for comprehensive assay automation and multiplexing pose significant technological and economical challenges to developers. By virtue of their intrinsic capability for powerful sample preparation, centrifugal systems have attracted significant interest...
The success of bioanalytical technologies deployed at decentralised settings is governed by various performance criteria such as user-friendliness, ease-of-use, cost per-test (at comparatively low sample throughput) and adaptability to a wide range of available analytes while performing with minimal instrumentation. The centrifugal microfluidic “La...
This paper presents two flow-control technologies for use on centrifugal Lab-on-a-Disc systems. The first, immiscible liquid valving, selectively blocks microfluidic channels using a high-density liquid fluorocarbon (FC-40). Used with a specific channel geometry, the FC-40 can permit liquid to enter a chamber but prevents it flowing back along the...
Since its inception in the late 2000s, blockchain has emerged as a powerful tool for creating trust without intermediaries to incentivize global communities for working for a common goal, such as the improvement of its very ecosystem, its applications and community adoption. While first blockchains were mainly devised for confirming transactions of...
A hallmark of subclinical atherosclerosis is the accumulation of vascular smooth muscle cell (SMC)-like cells leading to intimal thickening and lesion formation. While medial SMCs contribute to vascular lesions, the involvement of resident vascular stem cells (vSCs) remains unclear. We evaluated single cell photonics as a discriminator of cell phen...
Decentralized bioanalytical testing in resource-poor settings ranges among the prime applications of microfluidic systems. The high operational autonomy in such point-of-care / point-of-use scenarios requires on-board stored liquid reagents, which need to be safely contained during long-term storage, transport and handling, and reliably released pr...
Decentralized bioanalytical testing in resource-poor settings ranges among the prime applications of microfluidic systems. The high operational autonomy in such point-of-care / point-of-use scenarios requires on-board stored liquid reagents, which need to be safely contained during long-term storage, transport and handling, and reliably released pr...
Non-genuine medical products, including diagnostic devices, have become a lucrative business for fraudsters, causing significant damage to revenues and reputation of companies, as well as posing a significant risk to the health of people and societies. Along a “digital twin” representing centrifugal microfluidic flow control on exemplary “Lab-on-a-...
Enhancing the degree of functional multiplexing while assuring operational reliability and manufacturability at competitive costs are crucial ingredients for enabling comprehensive sample-to-answer automation, e.g., for use in common, decentralized “Point-of-Care” or “Point-of-Use” scenarios. This paper demonstrates a model-based “digital twin” app...
Fluidic larger-scale integration (LSI) resides at the heart of comprehensive sample-to-answer automation and parallelization of assay panels for frequent and ubiquitous bioanalytical testing in decentralized point-of-use/point-of-care settings. This paper develops a novel “digital twin” strategy with an emphasis on rotational, centrifugo-pneumatic...
Current, application-driven trends towards larger-scale integration (LSI) of microfluidic systems for comprehensive assay automation and multiplexing pose significant technological and economical challenges to developers. By virtue of their intrinsic capability for powerful sample preparation, centrifugal systems have attracted significant interest...
Enhancing the degree of functional multiplexing while assuring operational reliability and manufacturability at competitive costs are crucial ingredients for enabling comprehensive sample-to-answer automation, e.g., for use in common, decentralized “Point-of-Care” or “Point-of-Use” scenarios. This paper demonstrates a model-based ‘digital twin’ app...
Fluidic larger-scale integration (LSI) resides at the heart of comprehensive sample-to-answer automation and parallelization of assay panels for frequent and ubiquitous bioanalytical testing in decentralized the point-of-use / point-of-care settings. This paper develops a novel “digital twin” strategy with an emphasis on rotational, centrifugo-pneu...
Current, application-driven trends towards larger-scale integration (LSI) of microfluidic systems for comprehensive assay automation and multiplexing pose significant technological and economical challenges to developers. By virtue of their intrinsic capability for powerful sample preparation, centrifugal systems have attracted significant interest...
Enhancing the degree of functional multiplexing while assuring operational reliability and manufacturability at competitive costs are crucial components to enable comprehensive sample-to-answer automation, e.g., for use in common, decentralized “Point-of-Care” or “Point-of-Use” scenarios. This paper demonstrates a model-based ‘digital twin’ approac...
Larger-scale integration (LSI) resides at the heart of comprehensive sample-to-answer automation and parallelisation of assay panels for frequent and ubiquitous bioanalytical testing in decentralised the point-of-use / point-of-care settings. With an emphasis on rotational, centrifugo-pneumatic flow control, this paper employs a virtual “digital tw...
Since its launch just over a decade ago by the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, the distributed ledger technology (DLT) blockchain has followed a breathtaking trajectory into manifold application spaces. This study aper analyses how key factors underpinning the success of this ground-breaking “Internet of value” technology, such as staking of collateral (“s...
In this article, we discuss a data sharing and knowledge integration framework through autonomous agents with blockchain for implementing Electronic Health Records (EHR). This will enable us to augment existing blockchain-based EHR Systems. We discuss how major concerns in the health industry, i.e., trust, security and scalability, can be addressed...
Within microfluidic technologies, the centrifugal microfluidic “Lab-on-a-Disc” (LoaD) platform offers great potential for use at the PoC and in low-resource settings due to its robustness and the ability to port and miniaturize ‘wet bench’ laboratory protocols. We present the combination of ‘event-triggered dissolvable film valves’ with a centrifug...
Worldwide, the microfluidics industry has grown steadily over the last 5 years, with the market for microfluidic medical devices experiencing a compound growth rate of 22%. The number of submissions of microfluidic-based devices to regulatory agencies such as the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has also steadily increased, creating a strong d...
Advanced flow control such as valving and routing is instrumental in coordinating complex preparative and analytical tasks in an automated fashion on highly integrated rotational “Lab-on-a-Disk” (LoaD) systems. This article reviews various recently developed centrifugal flow control techniques which employ strategically placed functional membrane m...
This perspective proposes that, by virtue of its sophisticated trust and consensus finding mechanisms, blockchain has the clear potential to substantially upgrade the processes and organization traditionally underpinning academic science and commercial technology development comprising funding, project delivery, generation of intellectual property,...
We outline the concept of an open technology platform that builds upon a publicly accessible library of fluidic designs, manufacturing processes, and experimental characterization, as well as virtualization by a "digital twin" based on modeling, simulation, and cloud computing. Backed by the rapidly emerging Web3 technology "Blockchain," we signifi...
Sample-to-answer automation of multiplexed bioassay panels represents a key selling point of microfluidic Lab-on-a-chip devices. For real-world point-of-use scenarios, on-chip reagent storage is a key requirement for enabling the downstream microfluidic operations (e.g., resuspension of dried or lyophilized reagents using stored buffers) [1]. Sever...
Most point-of-care applications require onboard storage of liquid reagents such as buffers and stains. The reliable handling and release of these reagents is key to enabling the multiple unit operations on these platforms. We present here a centrifugal buoyancy-driven release mechanism [1], where the balance between a stored aqueous reagent (to pro...
An overwhelming majority of experts has been flagging for decades that "Saving the Planet" requires immediate, persistent and drastic action to curb a variety of catastrophic risks over the 21 st century. However, despite compelling evidence and a range of suggested solutions, transnational coordination of effective measures to protect our biospher...
Vascular lesions enriched with smooth muscle (SMC)-like cells contribute to the development of subclinical atherosclerosis yet the origin of these cells remains controversial. Herein, we combine single cell label-free photonics with lineage tracing analysis to examine the cellular heterogeneity of vascular cells within lesions. Single cell autofluo...
Burger Kinahan Cayron- [...]
Jens Ducrée
We present a powerful and compact batch-mode mixing and dilution technique for centrifugal microfluidic platforms. Siphon structures are designed to discretize continuous flows into a sequence of droplets of volumes as low as 100 nL. Using a passive, self-regulating 4-step mechanism, discrete volumes of two fluids are alternatingly issued into a co...
The majority of commercially oriented microfluidic technologies provide novel point-of-use solutions for laboratory automation with important areas in the context of the life sciences such as health care, biopharma, veterinary medicine and agrifood as well as for monitoring of the environment, infrastructures and industrial processes. Such systems...
DLT4RTD will offer a disruptive, blockchain-based crowdsourcing instrument to seminally improve quality, speed and credibility of complex, multi-disciplinary Research & Technology Development (RTD) initiatives. This Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) enables a game-changing business model leveraging so far untapped, best-in-class competences, skil...
This work shows for the first time how unavoidable tolerances in manufacturing and experimental input parameters have a decisive influence on the reliability of flow control in Lab-on-a-Disk (LoaD) platforms and must therefore be considered towards larger scale fluidic integration (LSI). INTRODUCTION With their increasing commercialization, assurin...
Microfluidic technology can provide cost-efficient, user-friendly devices for applications in the life sciences, environmental monitoring and the agrifood, through miniaturization and automation. In Alberta, undetected estrus is the leading reason for poor reproductive efficiency in dairy herds. Therefore, accurately identifying estrus by monitorin...
The successful commercialisation of microfluidics-enabled solutions in the context of the life sciences is typically led by significant techno-economical challenges on performance, reliability and cost of development and manufacture. With the example of the centrifugal microfluidic "Lab-on-a-Disc" technology, this paper outlines a platform-based ap...
Integrated microfluidic technologies have demonstrated significant benefits for a range of applications, mostly in the context of decentralised bioanalytical multiparameter testing at the point of use with primary applications in healthcare, pharma, veterinary medicine, agrifood and life-science research as well as monitoring of the environment, in...
In this paper we present a wirelessly powered array of 128 centrifugo-pneumatic valves that can be thermally actuated on demand during spinning. The valves can either be triggered by a predefined protocol, wireless signal transmission via Bluetooth, or in response to a sensor monitoring parameters like temperature or homogeneity of the dispersion....
The dynamically emerging trend of decentralised sample prep and testing of biosamples such as blood, water and industrial fluids in the life sciences at the point-of-use spurred the emergence of a plethora of microfluidic technologies. Based on a thorough market analysis, this presentation will illustrate the approach of FPC@DCU - the Fraunhofer Pr...
Increased demands for protein production efficiency by identification of optimal protein producer cells and more stringent FDA requirements regarding single cell clonality represent key unmet needs within the biopharma industry. A microfluidic single cell analysis device is reported within that identifies optimal protein producing cells within a po...
Web 3.0 will be driven by decentralisation through the recently hyped blockchain; this game-changing distributed ledger technologies (DLT) are deemed by many experts to “democratise” our economies, e.g. through models like crowdsourcing or personal ownership of valuable data. However, while DLT bestows an unprecedented level of trust to financial t...
Integrated microfluidic technologies have demonstrated significant benefits for a range of applications, mostly in the context of decentralised bioanalytical multiparameter testing at the point of use with primary applications in healthcare, pharma, veterinary medicine, agrifood and life-science research as well as monitoring of the environment, in...
Cellular activation and inflammation leading to endothelial dysfunction is associated with cardiovascular disease (CVD). We investigated whether a single cell label-free multi parameter optical interrogation system can detect endothelial cell and endothelial progenitor cell (EPC) activation in vitro and ex vivo, respectively. Cultured human endothe...
Electron-Cyclotron-Resonance-(ECR)-Heating (ECRH) by exposing electrons in more or less sophisticated magnetic structures to single ElectroMagnetic Wave (EMV)-frequencies is well established in many applications. ECRH creates an extreme non-equilibrium plasma with high energy electrons and ions only at hyper-thermal energies. When the electrons gai...
Integrated microfluidic technologies have demonstrated significant benefits for a range ofapplications [...]
The functionality of microfluidic systems is often sensitively impacted by real-world effects such as inaccuracies in the definition of liquid volumes and geometries. While systematic deviations like thermal shrinkage may be compensated by proper design, statistical errors may significantly impair functionality, particularly when resulting errors p...
A microfluidic approach is developed to automate and simplify multiplexed metabolite assays. Solid matrix assisted laser desorption ionization mass spectrometry (SMALDI-MS) on nanoporous thin films is suitable for analyzing small molecules, particularly metabolites, with a simple spot test. We present a system for blood sample preparation for metab...
Integrated microfluidic technologies have demonstrated significant benefits for a range of applications, mostly in the context of decentralised bioanalytical multiparameter testing at the point of use with primary applications in healthcare, pharma, veterinary medicine, agrifood and life-science research as well as monitoring of the environment, in...
As a direct, label-free method, Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) detection significantly reduces the needs for liquid handling and reagent storage compared to common enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs), thus enabling comprehensive multiplexing of bioassays on microfluidic sample-to-answer systems. This paper describes a highly integrated cen...
With the ability to affect multiple genes and fundamental pathways simultaneously, miRNA engineering of Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) cells has significant advantages over single gene expression or repression. Tight control of these molecular triggers is desirable as it could in theory allow on/ off or even tunable regulation of desirable cellular ph...
It is commonly recognised that microfluidic technologies will leverage a broad range of decentralised "point-of-use" applications in areas such as healthcare, pharma, veterinary medicine, agrifood and life-science research as well as monitoring of the environment, infrastructures and industrial processes. However, in particular during market entry,...
Globally, the need for “on-site” algal-toxin monitoring has become increasingly urgent due to the amplified demand for fresh-water and for safe, “toxin-free” shellfish and fish stocks. Herein, we describe the first reported, Lab-On-A-Disc (LOAD) based-platform developed to detect microcystin levels in situ, with initial detectability of saxitoxin a...
The commercial development of many microfluidics-enabled commercial devices requires rapid optimization and cost-efficient development of competitively priced, and still very rugged, mostly single-use devices. A key challenge remains the seamless scale-up of manufacture from laborious prototyping techniques based on low-throughput machinery and fre...
The accumulation of vascular smooth muscle (SMC)-like cells within the intima contributes significantly to intimal medial thickening (IMT) and vascular remodeling typical of arteriosclerotic disease. Light has emerged as a powerful tool to interrogate cells label-free and facilitates discriminant observations both in vitro and in vivo . The auto-fl...
There is currently a gap in the use of centrifugal microfluidics in the field environmental sensing. This review provides therortical perspectives that have been demonstrated for applications in other domains...
In this paper we present a wirelessly powered array of 128 centrifugo-pneumatic valves that can be thermally actuated on demand during spinning. The valves can either be triggered by a predefined protocol, wireless signal transmission via Bluetooth, or in response to a sensor monitoring a parameter like the temperature, or homogeneity of the disper...
The accumulation of vascular smooth muscle (SM)-like cells within the intima contributes significantly to intimal medial thickening (IMT) and vascular remodelling typical of arteriosclerotic disease. The source of these cells remains controversial. Light has emerged as a powerful tool to interrogate cells label-free and facilitates discriminant obs...
Point-of-care (POC) testing attracts more and more attention in the medical health sector because of their specific property to perform the diagnostic close to the patient. The fast diagnosis right at the hospital or the doctor’s office improves the medical reaction time and the chances for a successful healing process. One of this POC test systems...
Early diagnosis and prognosis of prostate cancer (PCa) is increasingly moving towards evaluations based on a strategic combination of biomarkers. The ability to parallelize multi-parameter detection on the same device is hence considered as a substantial improvement compared to conventional, single-marker methods such as total prostate-specific ant...
We present for the first time an integrated wirelessly powered Arduino processor and Bluetooth interface that are co-rotated with the cartridge to allow large-scale process integration on a centrifugal microfluidic platform. This highly modular, electronically controlled “Lab-on-a-Disc” system (eLoaD) can independently actuate up to 128 normally-cl...
This work presents a rotational-pulse actuated micro-fluidic cartridge enabling automated detection of plant pathogens on a compact device towards point-of-use monitoring of food safety. This highly integrated “Lab-on-a-Disc” (LoaD) system first runs the sample over a stationary phase of silica beads, followed by ethanol (EtOH) wash and final eluti...
Point-of-care diagnostics devices require user-friendly automation of multi-step / multi-reagent bioana-lytical protocols. We demonstrate, for the first time, Laser-actuated, Centrifugo-Pneumatic Valves (LCPVs) which open on-demand by ablating a remotely connected polymeric membrane with an instrument-based laser. Due to its small footprint, isolat...
Measurement of the height of a packed column of cells or beads, which can be direclty related to the number of cells or beads present in a chamber, is an important step in a number of diagnostic assays. For example, haematocrit measurements may rapidly identify anemia or polycthemia. Recently, user-friendly and cost-efficient Lab-on-a-Chip devices...
ESI_Data.
This file contains the data acquired during experimentation.
(XLSX)
This paper describes the design, fabrication and performance of a reusable ionogel-based photo-actuator, in-situ photopolymerised into a lab-on-a-disc microfluidic device, for flow control. The ionogel provides an effective barrier to liquids during storage of reagents and spinning of the disc. A simple LED (white light) triggers actuation of the i...
HUVEC and EA.hy926 are cell models acting as key reporters for staging patients with cardiovascular disease (CVD). For the first time, microfluidic and optical technologies are integrated to resolve the real-time response of individual cell types in a population upon stimulation with the specific, inflammatory agents, tumor necrosis factor alpha (T...
Excessive cell division is characteristic for the onset of cancer. By removing the enabling cell spindle, many chemotherapeutic agents interfere with this key process also referred to mitosis. However, cancer cells vary widely in their susceptibility to these cytotoxic agents. It has been demonstrated that cells are significantly less deformable du...
Apoptosis, the programmed death of cells, plays an important role, for instance in the natural prevention of adverse auto-immune reactions when fighting disease. In this work, we present, for the first time, a microfluidic method for real-time in vitro monitoring of apoptosis at single-cell resolution. The novel cell biology approach is enabled by...
This paper reports centrifugal microfluidic automation of surface plasmon resonance (SPR) detection of a protein concentration series (IgG). Using event-triggered rotational flow control based on water-dissolvable film (DF) valving, blood separation, metering, incubation and washing steps were parallelized on an integrated "Lab-on-a-Disc" (LoaD) ca...
We present a centrifugal microfluidic “Lab-on-a-Disc” (LoaD) system capable of implementing nucleic acid in vitro amplification using non-contact heating and fluorescence detection. The system functionality is verified by implementing a Nucleic Acid Sequence Based Amplification (NASBA) reaction, targeting the tmRNA transcript of Haemophilus influen...
The development of a centrifugal device for quantitative analysis of both chromium (III) and (VI) species in water is reported. ChromiSense is a colourimetric sensor system that has been applied to the measurement of chromium in spiked river water samples. For analysis, the sample is loaded into a reservoir on the disposable microfluidic disc, alon...
Antibody immobilization on polymeric substrates is a key manufacturing step for microfluidic devices that implement sample-to-answer automation of immunoassays. In this work, a simple and versatile method to bio-functionalize poly(methylmethacrylate) (PMMA), a common material of such “Lab-on-a-Chip” systems, is proposed; using the Layer-by-Layer (L...
Here we present integrated Lab-on-a-Disc (LoaD) cartridges which are applied to the purification of nucleic acid using the silica bead based method. We utilize a novel combination of `event-triggered' dissolvable film (DF) valving [1] and a centrifugo-pneumatic siphon valve (CPSV) [2] to permit timing of sample incubations, washes and DNA elution....
Globally, fresh and brackish water sources are constantly under treat of exposure to toxins. Two of the most prevalent toxins from fresh and brackish water blooms are the cyclic peptide toxins of the microcystin family, formed from cyanobacterial, and the kainic acid analog neurotoxin known as domoic acid. There is therefore a significant need for...
The MariaBox project, funded by the European Commission (Contract 614088), is developing an autonomous, analytical device, based on novel biosensors, for monitoring chemical and biological pollutants in sea water. The device, currently at first prototype level, is suitable for installation in free floating devices, buoys or ships. The main, high-le...