Focus - Chemical Engineering from Monash University | Page 3

YOUR BLOOD TYPE IN WRITING:
THE GLIF PAPER SENSOR
“ The GLIF card

sensor is a
paradigm shift
in blood group
diagnostics.
GLIF requires
no external
elements to
perform a
safe, reliable
and fast ABO
test.”

Award winning research from
Monash’s Australian Pulp and Paper
Institute (now BioPRIA) has taken
another important step toward
commercialisation.
The GLIF card, developed by
Professors Wei Shen and Gil
Garnier, together with Haemakinesis,
their collaborating company, is a
low-cost, paper-based sensor for
use in developing countries and
remote areas where advanced
medical facilities are limited, and
developed countries for rapid
and mobile diagnosis. The GLIF
card (named Group Legible
Immunohaematology Format) is a
low-cost bioactive paper device to
test ABO and rhesus (RhD) blood
types. The results literally appear
in writing. It is the world’s first
whole blood, self-interpreting blood
grouping test. It requires no water,
no electricity and no laboratory.
This research began in 2008 and
was awarded the 2012 Eureka Prize
for Innovative Use of Technology.
It has since captured the world’s
media attention for its Harry Potter
inspired self-reporting paper.
In this technology, paper text
patterns are printed within the paper
to interact with antibodies and red
blood cells. Composite text patterns

Watch the GLIF video

ABO results appear within minutes

Chemical Engineering

Monash

consisting of the bioactive and
nonbioactive sections are used to
form the letters and symbols for the
final display of the testing report.
This paper-based device rapidly
reports a patient’s blood type in
unambiguous written text.
The team, led by Professors Shen
and Garnier, began their paperbased microfluidic research in 2008,
when they developed techniques of
printing biological reagents (proteins
and enzymes) on paper and making
microfluidic systems using paper.
By 2009 the team was collaborating
with researchers in biomedical, nano
fabrication, analytical chemistry and
materials engineering to explore
immunological sensing on paper.
In 2011 Professor Shen had a
breakthrough with the text-reporting
method to report assay results with
another critical invention patented in
2015.
The major advantage of using
paper to develop sensors is that
it is an ubiquitous and cheap
material. Paper can also be
printed upon, facilitating the use of
printing technology to manufacture
sensors, in this case printing with
biomolecules instead of ink.
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