General description of our research
Research in Anbuhi Research Group is aiming to develop fast, eco-friendly, and low-cost lab-on-a-chip sensors for applications in environmental monitoring and point-of-care diagnostics.
As the world population grows constantly, the demand for fast and reliable sensors for the control of food and water resources increases dramatically. Also, in many developing countries and remote places which do not have access to the minimum equipment required for the assessment of their water and food quality, there is an urgent need for cheap and simple sensors to do so.
In addition, early detection of infectious and non-infectious diseases such as cancer is of great importance which allows for controlling contagious diseases before getting prevalent and helps for the better treatment of the patients due to the rapid diagnosis of their disease in the early stages. Therefore, point-of-care diagnostics have drawn great attention during recent years and has a fast-growing market in the upcoming years.
Current research themes
Microfluidic paper-based analytical devices (μPADs)
Microfluidic paper-based analytical devices (μPADs) are a type of microfluidics technology that has gained much attention since 2007. In μPADs, paper is used as a platform for the fabrication of microfluidic channels and loading of detecting reagents. These devices are a great candidate to meet the WHO's ASSURED criteria for point-of-care analytical devices, which stands for Affordable, Sensitive, Specific, User-friendly, Rapid and robust, Equipment-free, and Deliverable to end users owing to the great characteristics of paper. These characteristics include paper's low cost and availability in almost every country, liquid wicking ability without needing external equipment, renewability and eco-friendliness, and compatibility with various kinds of molecules and biomolecules and detection techniques.
Some examples of our work:
Dip-and-read μPAD for the quantitative and qualitative detection of water hardness in water (read more)
Automation of multi-step reactions on paper-based devices by using integrated layers of reagents (read more)
Creating fast flow channels in paper fluidic devices with 10x faster wicking speed to control the timing of sequential reactions (read more)
Tablet-based assays
Introduced in 2014 by Dr. Jahanshahi-Anbuhi, tablet-based assays provide durable and easy-to-use assays and bioassays for the detection of various analytes in different media such as water. In the tablet-based assays, pre-measured amounts of reagents are encapsulated by polysaccharides in the form of tablets which can later be dissolved in the sample of interest and give a signal, indicating whether the target analytes are present in the samples.
Some examples of our work:
Detection of phosphate in water samples by using gold nanoparticles and Eu-dextran tablets (read more)
Pulllulan encapsualtion of labile biomolecules to increase stability of bioassays and detection of pesticides (read more)