PERSONAL METABOLOME MACHINE FOR PRECISION HEALTHCARE

Boon Chong Cheah, Alasdair I. MacDonald, Christopher Martin, Srinivas Velugotla, Mohammed Al-Rawhani, Michael P. Barrett and David R. S. Cumming

Metabolites are the tiny molecules of life. Healthy metabolite levels are important to our wellbeing and the ensemble of these molecules makes up the metabolome. In the same way that pioneering research in sequencing technologies unravelled the personal genome, we are now working on technology that will give everyone near instant access to their own metabolome. This technology has the potential to revolutionise diagnostics and the delivery of precision healthcare for all.

The world of electronics is dominated by low cost, mass-manufactured CMOS technology. CMOS has made modern computing and communications possible and has made an enormous impact on sensing technology such as the digital camera. This technology has also been successfully implemented into a next generation sequencing system – a personal genome machine and commercialised in the Ion TorrentTM, the world’s first optics-free sequencing system.

Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) Technology

Figure 1 The vision of the personal metabolome machine.

Personal Metabolome Machine

Diagnostics clinical chemistry often exploits specific enzymes to quantify metabolites. Together with CMOS, we can create enzyme-based sensing assays for the metabolome using ion sensitive device or optical technologies.

Figure 4 (A) A packaged CMOS chip with microfluidics. (B) Optical image of the CMOS chip with an enlarged image of the pixel containing both ionic and optical devices. (C) The microfluidics channels. (D) The experimental setup.

How It Works Our device and instrumentation

Using CMOS, we could make integrated and miniaturised metabolomic sensing devices. Together with microfluidics and state-of-the-art 2D inkjet printing, multiple enzyme-based metabolic sensing could lead to the personal metabolome machine. Figure 5 shows glucose quantification for diabetes mellitus monitoring and also enzyme kinetics assay capability.

Conclusion

Figure 3 Enzyme-based sensing assay for metabolites using (A) optical technologies and (B) ion sensitive device.

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(B)

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CMOS Chip

Figure 5 (A) A typical graph that is obtained from the CMOS chip for glucose measurement. (B) Enzyme kinetics assay obtained using our device that before now required large and expensive bench top laboratory equipment.

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Figure 2 Personal genome machine.

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This revolutionary research aim to develop novel arrays of sensor technology on CMOS platforms to create a metabolomic sensing device. So far we have shown that the miniaturised technology that we are creating has the ability to replicate enzyme kinetics assays that before now required large and expensive bench-top laboratory equipment. Our pioneering research seeks to develop the world's first handheld diagnostics healthcare system, placing the UK at the forefront of this exciting technology.