- The BiophysicaL Immune Profiling for Infants (BLIPI) profiles an infant’s immune system in under 15 minutes, using just a single drop of blood
- Enables early detection of life-threatening conditions in premature babies
- Innovation builds on SMART’s earlier success in adult immune profiling and has the potential to significantly improve neonatal care
Singapore, 26 May 2025 – Researchers from the Critical Analytics for Manufacturing Personalized-Medicine (CAMP) and Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) interdisciplinary research groups (IRGs) of Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART), MIT’s research enterprise in Singapore, and KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital (KKH), have developed a first-of-its-kind device to profile the immune function of newborns.
(Photo: KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital)
Using a single drop of blood, the BiophysicaL Immune Profiling for Infants (BLIPI) system provides real-time insights into newborns’ immune responses, enabling the early detection of severe inflammatory conditions and allowing for timely interventions. This critical innovation addresses the urgent and unmet need for rapid and minimally invasive diagnostic tools to protect vulnerable newborns, especially those born prematurely.
Critical unmet need in newborn care
Premature infants are particularly vulnerable to life-threatening conditions such as sepsis and necrotising enterocolitis (NEC). Newborn sepsis — a bloodstream infection occurring in the first weeks of life — is a major global health challenge, causing up to one million infant deaths worldwide annually. NEC, a serious intestinal disease that causes severe inflammation, is one of the leading causes of death in premature babies – up to 50 percent of low birth weight neonates who get NEC do not survive. Infants can show vague symptoms, making diagnosis of these conditions challenging. However, both conditions can worsen rapidly and require immediate medical intervention for the best chance of recovery.
Current diagnostic methods to detect and prevent these serious conditions in newborns rely on large blood samples — up to 1 ml, a significant quantity of blood for a newborn — and lengthy laboratory processes. This is not ideal for newborns whose total blood volume may be as little as 50 mL among very premature infants less than 28 weeks old, which limits repeated or high-volume sampling and can potentially lead to anaemia and other complications. At the same time, conventional tests — such as blood cultures or inflammatory panels — may take hours to days to return actionable results, limiting prompt targeted clinical interventions. The novel BLIPI device addresses these challenges by requiring only 0.05 ml of blood and delivering results within 15 minutes.
Revolutionising newborn care
In a study, “Whole blood biophysical immune profiling of newborn infants correlates with immune responses”, published in Pediatric Research, the researchers demonstrated how BLIPI leverages microfluidic technology to measure how immune cells change when fighting infection by assessing their size and flexibility. Unlike conventional tests that only look for the presence of germs, BLIPI directly shows how a baby’s immune system is responding. The cell changes that BLIPI detects align with standard tests doctors rely on, including C-reactive protein (CRP) levels, white blood cell counts, and immature-to-total neutrophil ratios. This testing format can quickly reveal whether a baby’s immune system is fighting an infection.
In the study, BLIPI was used to screen 19 infants at multiple timepoints — 8 full-term and 11 preterm — and showed clear differences in how immune cells looked and behaved between the babies. Notably, when one premature baby developed a serious blood infection, the device was able to detect significant immune cell changes. This shows its potential in detecting infections early.
Just one drop of blood
BLIPI is a portable device that can give results at the ward or the neonatal intensive care units (NICUs), removing the need for transporting blood samples to the laboratory and making it easily implementable in resource-limited or rural healthcare settings. Significantly, BLIPI needs just one drop of blood, and 20 times less blood volume than what existing methods require. These swift results can help clinicians make timely, life-saving decisions in critical situations such as sepsis or NEC, where early treatment is vital.
(Photo: KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital)
“Our goal was to create a diagnostic tool that works within the unique constraints of neonatal care — minimal blood volume, rapid turnaround, and high sensitivity. BLIPI represents a major step forward by providing clinicians with fast, actionable immune health data using a non-invasive method, where it can make a real difference for newborns in critical care,” said Dr Kerwin Kwek, Research Scientist at SMART CAMP and SMART AMR, and co-lead author of the study.
“KKH cares for about two-thirds of all babies born weighing less than 1,500 grams in Singapore. These premature babies often struggle to fight infections with their immature immune systems. With BLIPI, a single prick to the baby’s finger or heel can give us rapid insights into the infant’s immune response within minutes. This allows us to tailor treatments more precisely and respond faster to give these fragile babies the best chance at a healthy start not just in their early days, but throughout their lives,” said Assistant Professor Yeo Kee Thai, Senior Consultant at the Department of Neonatology at KKH, and senior author of the study.
Future research will focus on larger clinical trials to validate BLIPI’s diagnostic accuracy across diverse neonatal populations with different age groups and medical conditions. The researchers also plan to refine the device’s design for widespread adoption in hospitals globally, bringing a much-needed diagnostic solution for vulnerable infants at their cot side. Beyond hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and researchers may also leverage BLIPI in clinical trials to assess immune responses to neonatal therapies in real-time — a potential game-changer for research and development in paediatric medicine.
“BLIPI exemplifies our vision to bridge the gap between scientific innovation and clinical need. By leveraging microfluidic technologies to extract real-time immune insights from whole blood, we are not only accelerating diagnostics but also redefining how we monitor immune health in fragile populations. Our work reflects a new paradigm in point-of-care diagnostics: rapid, precise, and patient-centric,” said Prof Jongyoon Han, co-lead Principal Investigator at SMART CAMP, Principal Investigator at SMART AMR, Professor at MIT and corresponding author of the paper.
The research conducted at SMART is supported by the National Research Foundation (NRF) Singapore under its Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE) programme. This collaboration exemplifies how Singapore brings together institutions as part of interdisciplinary, multi-institution efforts to advance technology for global impact. This work from KKH was partially supported by the Nurturing Clinician Scientist Scheme under the SingHealth Duke-NUS Academic Clinical Programme.
About Critical Analytics for Manufacturing Personalized-medicine (CAMP)
CAMP is a SMART interdisciplinary research group launched in June 2019. It focuses on better ways to produce living cells as medicine, or cellular therapies, to provide more patients access to promising and approved therapies. The investigators at CAMP address two key bottlenecks facing the production of a range of potential cell therapies: critical quality attributes (CQA) and process analytic technologies (PAT). Leveraging deep collaborations within Singapore and MIT in the United States, CAMP invents and demonstrates CQA/PAT capabilities from stem to immune cells. Its work addresses ailments ranging from cancer to tissue degeneration, targeting adherent and suspended cells, with and without genetic engineering.
CAMP is the R&D core of a comprehensive national effort on cell therapy manufacturing in Singapore.
For more information, please visit: https://camp.smart.mit.edu/
About Antimicrobial Resistance Interdisciplinary Research Group (AMR IRG)
The AMR IRG is a translational research and entrepreneurship program that tackles the growing threat of antimicrobial resistance. By leveraging talent and convergent technologies across Singapore and MIT, we aim to tackle AMR head-on by developing multiple innovative and disruptive approaches to identify, respond to, and treat drug-resistant microbial infections. Through strong scientific and clinical collaborations, our goal is to provide transformative, holistic solutions for Singapore and the world.
For more information, please log on to: http://amr.smart.mit.edu/
About KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital (KKH)
KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital (KKH) is Singapore’s largest tertiary referral centre for obstetrics, gynaecology, paediatrics and neonatology. The academic medical centre specialises in the management of high-risk conditions in women and children.
Driven by a commitment to deliver compassionate, multidisciplinary care to patients, KKH leverages research and innovation to advance care. In 2021, the hospital launched the SingHealth Duke-NUS Maternal and Child Health Research Institute (MCHRI) to support the growth of every woman and child to their fullest potential and transform national heath in the region.
Some of the hospital’s breakthroughs include uSINE®, a landmark identification system for the administration of spinal epidural, the discovery of new genetic diseases like Jamuar Syndrome, and a series of guidelines for women and children to improve population health.
The academic medical centre is also a major teaching hospital for Duke-NUS Medical School, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine and Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine. In addition, KKH runs the largest specialist training programme for Obstetrics and Gynaecology, and Paediatrics in Singapore.
Founded in 1858, KKH marked its centenary as a maternity hospital and welcomed its 1.6 millionth baby in 2024. For more information, visit www.kkh.com.sg
About Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) [新加坡-麻省理工学院科研中心]
Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) is MIT’s Research Enterprise in Singapore, established by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in partnership with the National Research Foundation of Singapore (NRF) since 2007. SMART is the first entity in the Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE) developed by NRF. SMART serves as an intellectual and innovation hub for research interactions between MIT and Singapore. Cutting-edge research projects in areas of interest to both Singapore and MIT are undertaken at SMART. SMART currently comprises an Innovation Centre and five Interdisciplinary Research Groups (IRGs): Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR), Critical Analytics for Manufacturing Personalized-Medicine (CAMP), Disruptive & Sustainable Technologies for Agricultural Precision (DiSTAP), Mens, Manus and Machina (M3S), and Wafer-scale Integrated Sensing Devices based on Optoelectronic Metasurfaces (WISDOM).
SMART research is funded by the National Research Foundation Singapore under the CREATE programme.
For more information, please visit http://smart.mit.edu
