According to study results published in Scientific Reports, the potential of laser incubation for a one-minute test in a single diagnostic, could bring pre-transfusion testing out of the pathology lab to point-of-care, reducing the time to treatment with the potential to save lives of bleeding-out patients.
Safe blood transfusion requires compatibility testing of donor and recipient to prevent potentially fatal transfusion reactions. Detection of immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibodies requires incubation at 37 °C, often for up to 15 minutes. Current incubation technology predominantly relies on slow thermal-gradient dependent conduction. To address this problem, a team of scientist from BioPRIA, developed a rapid optical heating via laser, where targeted illumination of a blood-antibody sample in a diagnostic gel card is converted into heat, via photothermal absorption. Our laser-incubator heats the 75 µL blood-antibody sample to 37 °C in under 30 seconds. We show that red blood cells act as photothermal agents under near-infrared laser incubation, triggering rapid antigen-antibody binding. We detect no significant damage to the cells or antibodies for laser incubations of up to fifteen minutes. We demonstrate laser-incubated immunohaematological testing to be both faster and more sensitive than current best practice — with clearly positive results seen from laser incubations of just 40 seconds.
*This research was supported by the Australian Research Council Linkage Project LP110200973 and Haemokinesis Pty Ltd.
Congratulations to authors: Clare Manderson, Heather McLiesh, Rodrigo Curvello, Rico F Tabor, Jim Manolios and Gil Garnier.