Marco Bianchessi

New Architecture For An AES-EBU Digital Audio Receiver

This paper describes the realization of a digital audio receiver in accordance with the AES3 and S/PDIF format. It illustrates its realization and the performance obtained in terms of output jitter measured on the test chip. This receiver is realized in 3-metal layer 0.5 /spl mu/m CMOS technology, and with a 3.3 V power supply. This low power supply makes the interface compatible with the new generation of VLSI circuits, although it increases the analog design difficulties.

Point-of-care systems for rapid DNA quantification in oncology

The development of new powerful applications and the improvement in fabrication techniques are promising an explosive growth in lab-on-chip use in the upcoming future. As the demand reaches significant levels, the semiconductor industry may enter in the field, bringing its capability to produce complex devices in large volumes, high quality and low cost. The lab-on-chip concept, when applied to medicine, leads to the point-of-care concept, where simple, compact and cheap instruments allow diagnostic assays to be performed quickly by untrained personnel directly at the patients side. In this paper, some practical and economical considerations are made to support the advantages of point-of-care testing. A series of promising technologies developed by STMicroelectronics on lab-on-chips is also presented, mature enough to enter in the common medical practice. The possible use of these techniques for cancer research, diagnosis and treatment are illustrated together with the benefits offered by their implementation in point-of-care testing.

Q3: A Compact Device for Quick, High Precision qPCR

An accurate and easy-to-use Q3 system for on-chip quantitative real-time Polymerase Chain Reaction (qPCR) is hereby demonstrated, and described in detail. The qPCR reactions take place inside a single-use Lab-on-a-Chip with multiple wells, each with 5 to 15 µL capacity. The same chip hosts a printed metal heater coupled with a calibrated sensor, for rapid and accurate temperature control inside the reaction mixture. The rest of the system is non-disposable and encased in a 7 × 14 × 8.5 (height) cm plastic shell weighing 300 g. Included in the non-disposable part is a fluorescence read-out system featuring up to four channels and a self-contained control and data storage system, interfacing with an external user-friendly software suite. Hereby, we illustrate the engineering details of the Q3 system and benchmark it with seamlessly ported testing protocols, showing that Q3 equals the performance of standard commercial systems. Overall, to the best of our knowledge, this is one of the most mature general-purpose systems for on-chip qPCR currently available.

Key Enabling Technologies for Point-of-Care Diagnostics

A major trend in biomedical engineering is the development of reliable, self-contained point-of-care (POC) devices for diagnostics and in-field assays. The new generation of such platforms increasingly addresses the clinical and environmental needs. Moreover, they are becoming more and more integrated with everyday objects, such as smartphones, and their spread among unskilled common people, has the power to improve the quality of life, both in the developed world and in low-resource settings. The future success of these tools will depend on the integration of the relevant key enabling technologies on an industrial scale (microfluidics with microelectronics, highly sensitive detection methods and low-cost materials for easy-to-use tools). Here, recent advances and perspectives will be reviewed across the large spectrum of their applications.

Demonstration of an On-Chip Real-Time PCR for the Detection of Trypanosoma Cruzi

Discovered in 1909, Chagas disease, caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, continues to be an important tropical disease in Latin America and Caribbean, affecting more than 7 million people. Recently, Chagas disease has also been reported in US and Europe mainly because of unscreened blood donations by immigrants from endemic areas. Current Chagas disease diagnostic relies on search for parasites on blood smears using optical microscopes, screening for serological response, xenodiagnosis, hemoculture and, more recently, polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Each of these tests has its own problems, mainly because of the changes in the immunological profile of the patients and number of circulating parasites in the blood throughout the evolution of the disease. In endemic areas, logistic issues are an additional difficulty for delivering the results to the patients, so a rapid and sensitive point of care test is desirable. In this work, we present results of an on-chip test able to detect equivalent amounts of parasites’ DNA such as those typically present in both acute and chronic phase of the disease. We developed a silicon chip-based PCR using a portable thermocycler with fluorescent detectors that has many advantages over the conventional PCR. When compared to the conventional PCR, our on-chip reaction shows similar sensitivity (between 1 and 0.1 genome equivalents), but a shorter reaction time (35 min versus 90 min). The results presented herein are the first step towards the development of a portable diagnostic test using a fast, sensitive and specific reaction for the detection of Trypanosoma cruzi.