Concentration of white blood cells from whole blood by dual centrifugo-pneumatic siphoning with density gradient medium

Due to the pervasiveness of HIV infections in developing countries there exists a need for a low-cost, user-friendly point-of-care device which can be used to monitor the concentration of T-lymphocytes in the patient’s blood expressing the CD4+ epitope. As a first step towards developing a microfluidic “lab-on-a-disc” platform with this aim we present the concentration of white blood cells from whole blood using a density medium in conjunction with centrifugo-pneumatic siphon valves [1]. Two such valves are actuated simultaneously, removing the bulk of plasma through the upper valve and the bulk of WBCs through the lower valve while leaving the vast majority of red blood cells in the centrifugal chamber