A 3D-printed microfluidic-enabled hollow microneedle architecture for transdermal drug delivery.

Embedding microfluidic architectures with microneedles enables fluid management capabilities that present new degrees of freedom for transdermal drug delivery. To this end, fabrication schemes that can simultaneously create and integrate complex millimeter/centimeter-long microfluidic structures and micrometer-scale microneedle features are necessary. Accordingly, three-dimensional (3D) printing techniques are suitable candidates because they allow the rapid realization of customizable yet intricate microfluidic and microneedle features. However, previously reported 3D-printing approaches utilized costly instrumentation that lacked the desired versatility to print both features in a single step and the throughput to render components within distinct length-scales. Here, for the first time in literature, we devise a fabrication scheme to create hollow microneedles interfaced with microfluidic structures in a single step. Our method utilizes stereolithography 3D-printing and pushes its boundaries (achieving print resolutions below the full width half maximum laser spot size resolution) to create complex architectures with lower cost and higher print speed and throughput than previously reported methods. To demonstrate a potential application, a microfluidic-enabled microneedle architecture was printed to render hydrodynamic mixing and transdermal drug delivery within a single device. The presented architectures can be adopted in future biomedical devices to facilitate new modes of operations for transdermal drug delivery applications such as combinational therapy for preclinical testing of biologic treatments

Hydrogel‐Enabled Transfer‐Printing of Conducting Polymer Films for Soft Organic Bioelectronics

The use of conducting polymers such as poly(3,4‐ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT:PSS) for the development of soft organic bioelectronic devices, such as organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs), is rapidly increasing. However, directly manipulating conducting polymer thin films on soft substrates remains challenging, which hinders the development of conformable organic bioelectronic devices. A facile transfer‐printing of conducting polymer thin films from conventional rigid substrates to flexible substrates offers an alternative solution. In this work, it is reported that PEDOT:PSS thin films on glass substrates, once mixed with surfactants, can be delaminated with hydrogels and thereafter be transferred to soft substrates without any further treatments. The proposed method allows easy, fast, and reliable transferring of patterned PEDOT:PSS thin films from glass substrates onto various soft substrates, facilitating their application in soft organic bioelectronics. By taking advantage of this method, skin‐attachable tattoo‐OECTs are demonstrated, relevant for conformable, imperceptible, and wearable organic biosensing.The use of hydrogels enables transfer‐printing of poly(3,4‐ethylenedioxythiophene):polystyrene sulfonate thin films from glass substrates onto various soft substrates. Taking advantage of this technique, skin‐attachable organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) are fabricated on commercially available tattoo paper. Wearable tattoo‐OECTs are further demonstrated with the integration of a wireless readout system.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154307/1/adfm201906016.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154307/2/adfm201906016_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154307/3/adfm201906016-sup-0001-SuppMat.pd

Wearable and Mobile Bioanalytical Systems for Health Monitoring at the Point-of-Person

Point-of-care testing has greatly improved the accessibility of medical diagnostics and brought it from central laboratory closer to our daily life settings: hospitals, clinics, and pharmacies. The maturity and convergence of micro-device fabrication, sensing methodology development, and low power electronics technologies, in combination with the exponential expansion of internet of things infrastructure have provided an unprecedented opportunity to transform the accessibility of medical testing from the point-of-care to the point-of-person setting. Such transformation would create a paradigm shift in healthcare: moving away from reactive medicine to proactive medicine, which means instead of getting sick and then go to the doctor, the risk of developing disease will be calculated based on our daily measurements, informing timely and preventative actions. To realize point-of-person monitoring, the new generation of personal health monitoring systems should be: 1) portable, allowing for them to be easily distributed and embedded in our lives (e.g., in a wearable or mobile formats); 2) low cost and affordable by the general population; and 3) simple to operate, ideally eliminating the need for user intervention, for example, via automation of the underlying analytical operations. Moreover, the targeted bio-signal domain should be expanded from biophysical signals to biochemical signals to capture insightful health information related to different types of diseases at the molecular level.Aligned with this vision, this dissertation introduces new wearable and mobile bioanalytical systems that are uniquely positioned to support health monitoring at the point-of-person. The first section of this dissertation provides the background and an overview of the point-of-person health monitoring. The second section describes the biofluid-centered operations (e.g., sampling, management, processing, and sensing) that are essential for the realization of complete solutions for point-of-person biochemical monitoring (with the particular focus on wearable format). The third section demonstrates the mobile point-of-person biochemical platforms with specifics in different automated biofluid functionalities and biomarker detection. The final section discusses the remaining challenges and outlines the potential directions to be pursued in order to enable the large-scale deployment of biochemical health monitoring, and catalyze the transition from point-of-lab and point-of-care testing to point-of-person monitoring

An Autonomous 3D Biofluid Management and Analysis Lab-on-the-Body Platform for Point-of-Person Biomarker Monitoring Applications

Personal biomarker sensors are poised to transform personalized medicine by providing frequent and real-time measures of biomarker molecules, thus catalyzing the transition from point-of-lab and point-of-care testing to near-continuous monitoring at the point-of-person. To realize the full range of possibilities offered by such wearable and mobile sensors, in-situ active microfluid management capabilities are fundamentally required. Previously reported non-invasive wearable and mobile biomarker sensors rely on the in-situ analysis of biofluid samples that are passively collected in absorbent pads or 2D microfluidic housings. The spatial constraints of these platforms and their lack of active control on biofluid inherently limit the efficiency, diversity and frequency of end-point assessments. Here, by devising a suite of programmable electro-fluidic interfaces, integrated within a multi-layer flexible microfluidic device, we demonstrate key biofluid management functionalities, including biofluid flow actuation and compartmentalization, for autonomous lab-on-the-body sample analysis. System-level functionality is achieved by interfacing the microfluidic device with a wireless circuit board. The desired operations are validated on-body through human subject testing. The versatility of these unprecedented lab-on-the-body methodologies enables a wide-ranging complex sample processing and analysis operations that can converge to realize point-of-person monitoring platforms

Wearable and Mobile Bioanalytical Systems for Health Monitoring at the Point-of-Person

Point-of-care testing has greatly improved the accessibility of medical diagnostics and brought it from central laboratory closer to our daily life settings: hospitals, clinics, and pharmacies. The maturity and convergence of micro-device fabrication, sensing methodology development, and low power electronics technologies, in combination with the exponential expansion of internet of things infrastructure have provided an unprecedented opportunity to transform the accessibility of medical testing from the point-of-care to the point-of-person setting. Such transformation would create a paradigm shift in healthcare: moving away from reactive medicine to proactive medicine, which means instead of getting sick and then go to the doctor, the risk of developing disease will be calculated based on our daily measurements, informing timely and preventative actions. To realize point-of-person monitoring, the new generation of personal health monitoring systems should be: 1) portable, allowing for them to be easily distributed and embedded in our lives (e.g., in a wearable or mobile formats); 2) low cost and affordable by the general population; and 3) simple to operate, ideally eliminating the need for user intervention, for example, via automation of the underlying analytical operations. Moreover, the targeted bio-signal domain should be expanded from biophysical signals to biochemical signals to capture insightful health information related to different types of diseases at the molecular level.Aligned with this vision, this dissertation introduces new wearable and mobile bioanalytical systems that are uniquely positioned to support health monitoring at the point-of-person. The first section of this dissertation provides the background and an overview of the point-of-person health monitoring. The second section describes the biofluid-centered operations (e.g., sampling, management, processing, and sensing) that are essential for the realization of complete solutions for point-of-person biochemical monitoring (with the particular focus on wearable format). The third section demonstrates the mobile point-of-person biochemical platforms with specifics in different automated biofluid functionalities and biomarker detection. The final section discusses the remaining challenges and outlines the potential directions to be pursued in order to enable the large-scale deployment of biochemical health monitoring, and catalyze the transition from point-of-lab and point-of-care testing to point-of-person monitoring

An Autonomous 3D Biofluid Management and Analysis Lab-on-the-Body Platform for Point-of-Person Biomarker Monitoring Applications

Personal biomarker sensors are poised to transform personalized medicine by providing frequent and real-time measures of biomarker molecules, thus catalyzing the transition from point-of-lab and point-of-care testing to near-continuous monitoring at the point-of-person. To realize the full range of possibilities offered by such wearable and mobile sensors, in-situ active microfluid management capabilities are fundamentally required. Previously reported non-invasive wearable and mobile biomarker sensors rely on the in-situ analysis of biofluid samples that are passively collected in absorbent pads or 2D microfluidic housings. The spatial constraints of these platforms and their lack of active control on biofluid inherently limit the efficiency, diversity and frequency of end-point assessments. Here, by devising a suite of programmable electro-fluidic interfaces, integrated within a multi-layer flexible microfluidic device, we demonstrate key biofluid management functionalities, including biofluid flow actuation and compartmentalization, for autonomous lab-on-the-body sample analysis. System-level functionality is achieved by interfacing the microfluidic device with a wireless circuit board. The desired operations are validated on-body through human subject testing. The versatility of these unprecedented lab-on-the-body methodologies enables a wide-ranging complex sample processing and analysis operations that can converge to realize point-of-person monitoring platforms