Microfluidics for healthcare and drug discovery

University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia
What the facility does

Design, fabrication and testing of microfluidic platforms for drug discovery and healthcare applications.

Areas of expertise

Dr. Elvira's research group develops microfluidic (lab-on-a-chip) platforms for drug discovery and healthcare applications. The Elvira laboratory has been designed to fabricate and use microfluidic devices with feature sizes on the order of tens of micrometres. The laboratory has state-of-the art Class 100 laminar flow hoods for work under particulate-free conditions, several different types of pumping mechanisms for liquid insertion into the microfluidic devices, powerful Nikon microscopes for analysis and testing, and high-speed cameras for visualization of on-chip experiments.

Research services

Design, testing, prototyping, analysis, computational modelling, surface modification

Sectors of application
  • Agriculture, animal science and food
  • Chemical industries
  • Life sciences, pharmaceuticals and medical equipment
  • Manufacturing and processing

Equipment

Function

Laminar flow workstations

Laminar flow workstations with filtered air gas gun:

 

  • AirClean Systems AC648TLFC (2)
  •  Air Science Purair Flow-48 ISO5 (Class 100)

Plasma oven

Diener Electronic Zepto One plasma system

Nikon Ti2-U microscope

Nikon Ti2-U inverted microscope with phase contrast and 2x, 10x, 20x and 40x long working distance objective lenses

Nikon stereomicroscope

Nikon SMZ1270 stereomicroscope with 22 mm field of view and an LED ring illuminator

Lipid preparation facility

  • Avanti extruder set with heating block
  • Gilson P2L, P20, P200 and P1000 pipettes
  • Fisher Scientific vortex mixer

Syringe pumps

World Precision Instruments Aladdin programmable syringe pumps (4)

Precision syringe pumps

Cetoni neMESYS Low Pressure 290N syringe pumps with QmixELEMENTS control software (5)

Pressure pumps

Elvesys OB1 pressure controllers with three 0-2000 mbar channels, one 0-8000 mbar channel and digital flow sensors

Camera

Teledyne DALSA Genie Nano C1280

High-speed camera

Phantom VEO 710L high speed camera

High-speed camera

Mikrotron MotionBLITZ EoSens Cube7 high-speed camera

High-speed camera for fluorescence imaging

ORCA-Flash4.0 V3 sCMOS camera with 82% high quantum efficiency

Nikon Ti2-E microscope

Nikon Ti2-E inverted motorized microscope with perfect focus system, and 2x, 10x, 20x and 40x long working distance objective lenses, motorized epifluorescence turret and a motorized stage

Fluorescence light sources

Solis cold white and 365 nm LED light sources with a variety of filter cubes

Oven

Fisher Scientific Isotemp gravity convection oven

Spin coater

Laurell Technologies WS-650Mz-23NPPB spin coater

Title

URL

Microfluidics in Health Care and Drug Discovery: Large-scale potential from small-scale chips

https://www.uvic.ca/research/centres/biomedical/members/profiles/elvira-katherine.php

Dr. Elvira’s Canada Research Chair profile

http://www.chairs-chaires.gc.ca/chairholders-titulaires/profile-eng.aspx?profileId=3903

Video about Dr. Elvira’s research https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTBsPIXS6aU