Proprietary Technology

We’ve developed qDBS technology, a microfluidic technology that offers a solution for easy and accurate Self Sampling.

In Capitainer®B a double valve solution is applied to discard excess blood and deliver the metered 10µL to the sample disc.

qDBS Technology

All Capitainer blood sampling cards are built on our qDBS technology. It uses a combination of paper, polymer microfluidics and thin water-soluble membranes to meter a fixed volume of blood. After applying blood to the inlet, a metering channel in the device is automatically filled and the blood is transferred to a pre-cut DBS paper disc.

In the 10µL version, one blood drop is added to the inlet and a double valve solution is applied where a thin dissolvable membrane opens up after blood application and removes excessive blood at the inlet. Subsequently, a second membrane opens up , allowing for transfer of the metered blood volume onto the sample collection disk at the outlet.

The 50µL version applies a single valve solution with another filling mechanism, to allow application of multiple drops.

The sample is allowed to dry forming a high quality DBS sample suitable for quantitative analysis.

The metering mechanism employing thin dissolvable films was first demonstrated by G. Lenk et al

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Metering using the double valve qDBS technology applied in the Capitainer®B sampling card (previously called Capitainer®qDBS)

Evaluation Study

Manual Pipetting of Blood vs Capitainer® Collection
Experiment

EDTA-blood was collected from a coffee drinker by venous puncture
25 µL of blood was applied to 20 Capitainer® channels
For reference 10 µL of blood was applied by manual displacement pipetting to 20 discs removed from Capitainer®qDBS devices
Caffeine concentration was measured in all samples by an accredited LC-MS/MS method

Result