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aulloa edited this page Aug 17, 2015 · 11 revisions

Nebula Bio Protochip

The Protochip is a portable, modular, open-source, blood-analysis system. Currently it is hosted on the CheapStat, which is a potentiostat attached to a custom microcontroller and circuit board, but there are plans to move to Arduino or other more modular hosts. CheapStats can be purchased at IORodeo.

To watch the development of the Protochip in real-time, stay tuned to this repo and our Trello board.

Overview

The purpose of the Protochip is to supply biohackers, athletes, the quantified self community, academic researchers, and anyone interested in their health with a flexible, cheap, and---most imporantly---reliable tool for studying blood analytes. You can think of it as a replacement for the typical blood panels you get at a doctor's office, except you have full control over the data, and you can do it at home with just a finger prick and a computer. The hardware and software are also both portable and open source. The Protochip is a research tool, and it only reports raw data. The system is composed of 4 parts:

  1. The biochip consists of two pieces of plastic fused together with a small channel in the middle about 50 µm wide. Inside the channel we embed an antibody specific to whatever we want to test for. This is the basis for a microfluidic ELISA test. Biochips can be configured for any ELISA test, but (as of now) each biochip can only perform one test at a time.
  2. The potentiostat is an electrical circuit embedded in a silicon wafer which is basically just three electrodes. It connects to the biochip and measures the change in current across the microfluidic channel. Once the blood is introduced to the biochip's microchannel, the antibody will react with the analyte and cause a change in electrical current. This technique (rather standard in electrochemistry) is known as voltammetry. The relative change in current can tell us not only if a specific analyte is present, but also the concentration of said analyte.
  3. The microcontroller (mcu) reads the signal from the potentiostat then converts and transmits the data to a computer via USB.
  4. The driver is a software daemon that reads the data from the mcu and reports it to the user in a variety of formats. The daemon is fully configurable and scriptable by the user, or can be controlled by a GUI.

Currently the potentiostat and mcu are combined in the CheapStat. Each test requires less than a drop of blood produced by a standard finger prick. The entire system is designed to be modular, so it is not hard to imagine daisy-chaining Protochips together, perhaps in a cluster of Raspberry Pis, in order to emulate Theranos' infrastructure.

Current Status

  1. Hardware
    • In biochip fabrication the mold made from thick sheet metal bent and is producing uneven pressure distribution. An entire redesign of the Protochip Manufacturing System is recommended. The major goals for this redesign would be to produce a thicker channel mold which does not create waste wire. Another goal would be to create guide rails to assure even pressure distribution. the card for this project can be found on the trello board.
    • All Elisa assays have been performed in 96 well plates due to problems with the mold mentioned above.
    • First cheapstat ordered from IO rodeo did not function properly. The cheapstat ordered from Aaron Rowe is being used temporarily as we work toward a solution with IO rodeo.
  2. Wetware
    • The Elisa assay has only been tested using colormetric methods. The only difference in materials to turn the assays into electrochemical methods is to change the end substrate from PNPP top PAPP. Details can be found on trello, and in Wetware Results folders.
  3. Software
    • The driver has been written and tested with the bad board. It needs to be retested with the good one.

Fabrication

The Protochip is currently manufactured in-house. We've built some custom manufacturing tools to make the biochips. Instructions on how to make your own manufacturing tools are forthcoming. For now, to order a Protochip, email one of the members of this repo.

Our hotpress is outfitted with a pressure guage and a digital thermometer which allow for consistent chips to be made in 1 minute. The current press is designed for one chip at a time but can easily be exchanged into a larger rig to make multiple chips. The press is simple, but throroughly tested and provides consistent results.

Financing

We recently started a rolling crowdfunding project organized on Trello. Details are on that Trello board, but basically each card under "Needs Funding" is available for sponsorship. Just add a comment on the Trello card or contact one of the project members if you want to sponsor or fund a card.

All expenses are tracked in finances.dat in the repo root and calculated with ledger

Monetization

It is our intention to make the Protochip into a self-funding business. We follow the trail of other open-source hardware companies such as Raspberry Pi and Arduino.

Alpha testing of the protochip was financed out-of-pocket (see finances.dat in the root of the repo). For the beta testers, each chip costs about $10. As we expand, cost-per-chip will go down, until we arrive at an expected cost of $0.70 per chip.

Marketing

We implement a constraint-based marketing strategy. Each marketing-related project or operation must follow the constraints below:

  • No money is allowed to be spent on traditional advertising channels. This includes but is not limited to TV, billboards, magazine ads, brochures, t-shirts and other "swag". However stickers are allowed. We like stickers.
  • All press releases and blog posts must be written first by an engineer, second by a designer, and may be proofread by a liberal arts major. Marketing and business people are not allowed to write press releases or blog posts.
  • No anonymous stock photos or models are allowed in the marketing materials---photos must be taken by project members or customers.
  • The following words or phrases, or any form of these words, are not allowed in any marketing or business materials:
    • "Innovation"
    • "Revolutionary"
    • "high growth"
    • "venture capital"

Other than the above, anything goes!

Next Steps

  1. Hardware
    • An entire redesign of the Protochip Manufacturing System is recommended. The major goals for this redesign would be to produce a thicker channel mold which does not create waste wire. Another goal would be to create guide rails to assure even pressure distribution. The card for this project can be found on the trello board.
    • A redesign of the cheapstat in to an arduino shield is a priority.
  2. Wetware
    • Electrochemical methods need to be tested using the substrate PAPP.
    • A standard curve needs to be produced, and the reproducibility of the standard curve needs to be determined.
    • Incubation steps need to be optimized.
  3. Software - Driver needs to be retested using a functioning cheapstat. - After the redesign of the board an arduino library for the new board needs to be written.

Contact

  • Ben Sima
  • Andres Ulloa
    • AndresdUlloa at gmail dot com
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