Microfluidic autologous serum eye-drops preparation as a potential dry eye treatment

Abstract

Dry eye is a problem in tearing quality and/or quantity and it afflicts millions of persons worldwide. An autologous serum eye-drop is a good candidate for dry eye treatment; however, the eye-drop preparation procedures take a long time and are relatively troublesome. Here we use spiral microchannels to demonstrate a strategy for the preparation of autologous serum eye-drops, which provide benefits for all dry eye patients; 100% and 90% removal efficiencies are achieved for 10 μm microbeads and whole human blood cells, respectively. Since our strategy allows researchers to integrate other functional microchannels into one device, such a microfluidic device will be able to offer a new one-step preparation system for autologous serum eye-drops.