Modification of PET Blood Collection Tubes

Dr. Richard Zare and colleagues have developed an inexpensive, fast and simple method for treating polyethylene terephthalate (PET) blood collection tubes (BCTs) to remove bias and interference in various blood analysis procedures. Blood collection and processing are two major steps in pre-analytical laboratory testing. Traditionally, glass was the preferred material for making BCTs. However, due to danger from broken glass, BCTs are now made of plastic, specifically PET. The PET polymer surface is hydrophobic and not optimal for blood analysis as cells and analytes are adsorbed on the plastic surface. To overcome this limitation, tube manufacturers add a surfactant coating to the tube to make the inner surface hydrophilic. This approach has its own problems as the surfactant additives can interfere with blood analysis. Attempts have been made to minimize this interference but the methods are expensive, time consuming and/or ineffective. To overcome these problems, the inventors have developed an efficient and inexpensive method to prepare glass-like PET surfaces inside BCTs.

Stage of Research
The inventors have compared BCTs modified with their method, commercially available BCTs and glass BCTs in a number of clinical chemistry analyses using quality control material and patient blood samples. The results show that the inventors' modified BCTs exhibit bias-free performance, i.e. they behave like the gold standard glass tubes.