Lab-on-a-chip diagnostics to enable affordable research

The first full day of AAPS 2016 kicked off yesterday morning with a plenary session advances in pharmaceutical sciences to drive prevention and cures.

“We’re living in world that’s getting more and more connected​,” said Frederick Balagadde, Ph.D., KwaZulu-Natal Research Institute for TB and HIV (K-RITH), and AAPS plenary speaker.

Balagadde explained that while many of these issues, such as the Ebola outbreak, originate as third world problems, “in a globally interconnected world they affect everyone​.”

To address these issues, Balagadde and his team of researchers at K-RITH - the first microfluidics research facility in Africa - are developing microfluidic systems to increase access to affordable healthcare.

“We need to think of nontraditional approaches​,” he said, after demonstrating on a map that the world’s poorest countries carry the biggest proportion of infection disease.

“The traditional approaches to solving this problem are inadequate in many ways​,” he explained.

The systems Balagadde and his team are developing in Africa put the capabilities of a medical laboratory, and all of its staff, onto a small portable device.

“If one healthcare worker is doing the work of 100, research becomes much more affordable​,” said Balagadde.

Ultimately, Balagadde explained that through these system, the researchers could “create value that can be of usefulness to the rest of the world​,” and as such, add sub-Saharan Africa into “the global value creating system​.”

To learn more about Balagadde's work in microfluidics, watch his 2010 TEDTalk below.