Detect early stage lung cancer by a LAMP microfluidic chip system with a real-time fluorescent filter processor

This work presents a promising clinical molecular diagnostics for early stage lung cancer. This novel diagnostic method utilized the loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP), microfluidic chips and a confocal optical detector with a non-linear fluorescent filter processor. An isothermal amplification based microfluidic chip for the early diagnostics of lung cancer was developed and a confocal optical detector was improved by a novel real-time fluorescent filter to sensitively monitor the DNA amplification procedure with high signal to noise ratio and fluorescence collecting ability. Experiment showed that a rapid diagnostic of lung cancer by detecting the existence of the CEA mRNA could be performed in only 5 mu L of reaction assay in less than 45 min. While the traditional in-tube RT-PCR set consumed more than 25 mu L of the assay and took more than 90 min.