Use of tangential flow filtration for improving detection of viral adventitious agents in cell substrates

Tangential Flow Microfiltration for Viral Separation and Concentration

Microfluidic devices that allow biological particle separation and concentration have found wide applications in medical diagnosis. Here we present a viral separation polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) device that combines tangential flow microfiltration and affinity capture to enrich HIV virus in a single flow-through fashion. The set-up contains a filtration device and a tandem resistance channel. The filtration device consists of two parallel flow channels separated by a polycarbonate nanoporous membrane. The resistance channel, with dimensions design-guided by COMSOL simulation, controls flow permeation through the membrane in the filtration device. A flow-dependent viral capture efficiency is observed, which likely reflects the interplay of several processes, including specific binding of target virus, physical deposition of non-specific particles, and membrane cleaning by shear flow. At the optimal flow rate, nearly 100% of viral particles in the permeate are captured on the membrane with various input viral concentrations. With its easy operation and consistent performance, this microfluidic device provides a potential solution for HIV sample preparation in resource-limited settings.

Advancing Public Health Using Regulatory Science to Enhance Development and Regulation of Medical Products: Food and Drug Administration Research at the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research

Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research enhances and supports regulatory decision-making and policy development. This work contributes to our regulatory mission, advances medical product development, and supports Food and Drug Administration’s regulatory response to public health crises. This review presents some examples of our diverse scientific work undertaken in recent years to support our regulatory and public health mission.

One step forwards for the routine use of high-throughput DNA sequencing in environmental monitoring. An efficient and standardizable method to maximize the detection of environmental bacteria

We propose an innovative, repeatable, and reliable experimental workflow to concentrate and detect environmental bacteria in drinking water using molecular techniques. We first concentrated bacteria in water samples using tangential flow filtration and then we evaluated two methods of environmental DNA extraction. We performed tests on both artificially contaminated water samples and real drinking water samples. The efficiency of the experimental workflow was measured through qPCR. The successful applicability of the high‐throughput DNA sequencing (HTS) approach was demonstrated on drinking water samples. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of our approach in high‐throughput‐based studies, and we suggest incorporating it in monitoring strategies to have a better representation of the microbial community. In the recent years, HTS techniques have become key tools in the study of microbial communities. To make the leap from academic laboratories to the routine monitoring (e.g., water treatment plants laboratories), we here propose an experimental workflow suitable for the introduction of HTS as a standard method for detecting environmental bacteria.