Portable Resource-Independent Blood-Plasma Separator

Abstract

The centrifuge is the gold standard for lab-based sample processing. While extremely efficient and robust, centrifuges are seldom used in the field due to the high-power requirements, size, and operational complexity. The lack of viable alternatives for remote sample collection has crippled the ability for mobile practitioners in human and animal medicine to reliably collect blood samples from their patients. There is no truly resource-independent solution that is able to perform highly efficient blood-plasma separation. Here, we describe our initial efforts in developing the High Efficiency Rapid Magnetic Erythrocyte Separator (H.E.R.M.E.S) sleeve, an apparatus that uses a magnetic bead-based separation assay in a scaled-up form factor to achieve highly efficient separation of erythrocytes from plasma within a short amount of time. The sleeve is easy-to-use, is completely resource independent, and achieves highly efficient separation in sample volumes as large as 1 mL by means of a unique mixing scheme. We demonstrate the performance of the sleeve with human blood samples and compare it against conventional end-over-end mixing.