A Novel Hand-Held Spinning Platform with Centrifugal Microfluidics for Rapid, Cost-Effective Urinary Total Protein Detection at the Point of Care

Urinary total protein (UTP) serves as a critical biomarker for diagnosing and managing various diseases; however, current detection methods often face limitations regarding accessibility, cost, and operational complexity for point-of-care applications. This study presents a novel hand-held spinning platform with centrifugal microfluidics (HSP-C^M), a groundbreaking technology designed for electricity-free, cost-effective UTP detection at a remarkably low cost of approximately 1.4 USD per test. The HSP-C^M integrates a 3D-printed spinning device that ensures uniform reagent distribution and a centrifugal microfluidic biochip capable of providing quantitative UTP analysis in a colorimetric, rapid (∼3 min), and user-friendly format. Notable innovations of the system include tunable hydrophilic–hydrophobic surface properties via microchannel aspect ratio adjustments, optimized optical conditions with an ultrafast exposure time of 1/100 s, and minimal sample volume requirements (5 μL), resulting in a detection limit as low as 3.49 μg/mL. The system demonstrated high throughput (n = 16) and strong correlation (0.9481) and agreement (90.32%) with gold-standard laboratory methods when validated using clinical urine samples from both healthy donors (n = 6) and myocardial infarction (MI) patients (n = 25). Furthermore, the HSP-C^M successfully identified clinically relevant UTP thresholds (>63.11 μg/mL) for distinguishing high-risk MI patients, achieving 100% sensitivity and specificity in patient classification. This novel platform presents a transformative solution for point-of-care proteinuria monitoring, offering significant potential for deployment in remote and resource-limited environments, where it could enhance disease detection, management, and patient outcomes through its noninvasive, rapid, and efficient capabilities.