Sample to Answer: Integrated Lab on a Chip Sample Preparation for On-Site and Point-of-Care Testing

Point-of-care and on-site testing rely on microfluidic and lab-on-a-chip devices that process a raw sample and return a result without a central laboratory. Over the past two decades these systems have become faster, smaller and cheaper, and many now approach laboratory instruments in sensitivity. Sample preparation has not kept pace. Extraction, clean-up and preconcentration are still often carried out off-chip, by hand, or skipped altogether, and this front-end step is widely regarded as the main barrier to fully integrated sample-to-answer devices.Real samples make the problem harder. Blood, saliva, food and water are complex and variable, contain the target at low concentration, and carry interferents that degrade assay performance. Preparing such samples on-chip, reproducibly and without operator intervention, requires new materials, fluidic designs and interfacing strategies, together with reliable ways to connect preparation to separation and detection on a single platform. Progress here determines whether a device developed in the laboratory can be used at the bedside, in the clinic or in the field.This Research Topic aims to bring together recent advances in integrated sample preparation for lab-on-a-chip and total analysis systems, across both clinical and environmental applications, including wastewater-based surveillance and early warning. Themes of interest include, but are not limited to: • On-chip extraction, purification and clean-up of nucleic acids, pathogens, proteins, cells, and small molecules• Preconcentration and enrichment of low-abundance analytes within microfluidic devices• Coupling of sample preparation to on-chip separation and downstream detection (sample in, answer out)• Automated, reagent-stored or instrument-free sample preparation workflows• World-to-chip sample introduction and handling of complex matrices such as blood, saliva, food and water• Modular sample preparation that interfaces with existing detection or readout platforms• Robustness, reproducibility and validation of the sample preparation step outside the laboratory Topic editors: Rosanne Guijt, Helen Bridle, Kenneth Robert Williams Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/84100/sample-to-answer-integrated-lab-on-a-chip-sample-preparation-for-on-site-and-point-of-care-testing