Transforming blood collection practice in laboratory animals with next generation microsampling technology

Modern bioanalytical techniques are extremely sensitive and require very small sample volumes for analysis.

This spurred new sampling methods referred to as microsampling techniques where blood volumes are typically less than 50 microliter.

This new methodology has also been applied in laboratory animal science with great success and promises since it offers ways of reducing, refining and replacing work in animal science.State-of-the-art analysis tools are even more sensitive allowing samples to be as small as single microliters. However, such small volumes are difficult to precisely collect and difficult to accurately handle manually.

By designing special microsampling devices for such small volumes, such small samples can be accurately collected.

This would have an enormous impact of future laboratory animal science as this allows to sample from smaller species and further refining work flow.In this project we will develop and demonstrate microneedle-based blood microsampling devices to to collect minute samples in small laboratory animals and achieve robust blood sampling of 1 µl.