Science Advances

An energy-embodied paralleled liquid manipulation for equipment-free, quantitative multiplexed liver function monitoring

2025-08-08

Comprehensive liver function monitoring is vital for liver damage diagnoses. However, multiplexed testing with clinical accuracy often requires paralleled liquid manipulation to avoid reagent interference and nonspecific adsorption, making it restricted to centralized facilities and specialists. Here, we report an equipment-free, quantitative, and multiplexed point-of-care testing (POCT), the energy-embodied POCT (EE-POCT). The driving energy (pressured gas) and liquid reagents are embodied in separate rigid-flexible chambers through a mechanical pressure sensing mechanism to achieve a paralleled, interference-free, and multiple-reagent operation with no need for external equipment. The EE-POCT achieves quantitative results for nine liver-related indicators from 180 microliters of whole blood within 4 minutes. Validated with 103 clinical specimens, it shows high concordance with a clinical gold standard analyzer (Pearson coefficients >0.9). The EE-POCT platform not only advances liver health diagnostics but also sets a precedent for developing versatile, accessible medical technologies that can significantly affect global health outcomes.

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DOI https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adx0092