Aluminium valving and magneto-balloon mixing for rapid prediction of septic shock on centrifugal microfluidic platforms

•We developed a novel active valving mechanism (aluminium valving) to automate a sTREM-1 ELISA on a microfluidic disc/CD.•We used the magneto-balloon mixing to accelerate the ELISA, enabling rapid sepsis detection and prediction of septic shock.•We developed an automated centrifugal microfluidic system for the rapid prediction of septic shock in infected neonates. Rapid and early diagnosis of sepsis is critical, as sepsis mortality increases by 8 % per each hour of delay in treatment. It has been recently shown that the quantification of soluble triggering receptors expressed on myeloid cells-1 (sTREM-1) can accurately predict sepsis and septic shock in infected neonates. To automate sTREM-1 ELISA on a microfluidic disc, we developed a novel active valving mechanism by adding an aluminium and a thin flexible film layer to the common plastic materials used for the disc fabrication. To enable rapid sepsis detection and prediction of septic shock, we employed an active microballoon-based flow reciprocation mechanism in centrifugal microfluidic platforms to accelerate the sTREM-1 immunoassay. The technique is called magneto-balloon mixing and provides one liquid reciprocation cycle per disc revolution and accelerates biomolecular reactions happening on the microfluidic disc, leading to the rapid detection of sTREM-1 by ELISA. The magneto-balloon enabled the reduction of the assay time for the detection of 60 pg/ml sTREM-1 (for sepsis detection) and 300 pg/ml (for septic shock prediction) from five hours to 75 min. Based on the aluminium valving and magneto-balloon mixing techniques, we developed an automated centrifugal microfluidic platform that enables rapid prediction of septic shock.