Two undergraduate students from the Rice University have recently created an innovative medical device, which they say could help save some lives starting this summer. The students explain that they basically derived a fully-fledged centrifuge for blood separation using nothing more than a salad mixer. If their plan succeeds, then the inexpensive instrument could successfully be applied in a number of countries in the Third World, such as nations in Africa and India, Rice experts say.

The work was done in the lab of Rebecca Richards-Kortum, who is the Rice Stanley C. Moore professor and chair at the university's Department of Bioengineering. She is also the director of the Rice 360˚: Institute for Global Health Technologies. She was in charge of the team that included sophomore Lila Kerr (a Dayton, Ohio resident majoring in sociology), and freshman Lauren Theis (who was born in San Antonio, Texas, and majors in political sciences).

“There was a whole range of projects to take on this year, and luckily we got one that wasn't terribly engineering-intensive,” Kerr says. “We were essentially told we need to find a way to diagnose anemia without power, without it being very costly and with a portable device,” Theis explains.

The two discovered that a simple salad spinner was sufficient for most of these demands. When the students placed test tubes containing no more than 15 microliters of blood inside, and then spun the whole thing for about 10 minutes, they discovered that the heavier blood cells had separated from the lighter plasma. This is precisely what an expensive, electric centrifuge does, but their new device needs no electricity, and spares users of the costs associated with operating a complex electronic device.

“The students really did an amazing job of taking very simple, low-cost materials and creating a device their research shows correlates nicely with hematocrit levels in the blood. Many of the patients seen in developing world clinics are anemic, and it's a severe health problem. Being able to diagnose it with no power, with a device that's extremely lightweight, is very valuable,” says the director of the Rice Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen (OEDK), Maria Oden. She is also an engineering education professor at Rice. Measuring the ratio of red blood cells to the total volume of blood can help experts diagnose conditions such as tuberculosis, malaria, malnutrition, and HIV/AIDS.

Speaking about the advantages of the new centrifuge, the students said: “We've pumped it for 20 minutes with no problem. Ten minutes is a breeze. It's all plastic and pretty durable. We haven't brought it overseas yet, of course, but we've trekked it back and forth across campus in our backpacks and grocery bags and it's held up fine.” The mixer can analyze up to 30 samples simultaneously, as opposed to other, small electrical centrifuges, which can only mix 4 samples at a time.