microfluidics

Writing in the journal Science, a team headed by Hsian-Rong Tseng, Ph.D., at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Stephen Quake, Ph.D., at Stanford University, demonstrate a programmable microfluidics chip that can dramatically accelerate the development of many new molecular imaging molecules for PET. As a proof of principle, this group of academic and commercial scientists demonstrated that FDG could be synthesized on a "stamp-size" chip. These chips have a design similar to integrated electronic circuits, except they are made up of fluid channels, chambers, and values that can carry out many chemical operations to synthesize and label molecules for PET imaging. All the operations of the chip are controlled and executed by a personal computer.