Publications
Microfluidic Cell-based Assays in Stem Cell and Other Rare Cell Type Research
Microfluidics is a technology defined by the engineered precise manipulation of minute amount of liquids through channels with dimensions in the micron scale. Much of microfluidic devices used for biomedical purposes are produced in the form of so called “lab-on-a-chip” format, where multiple steps of conventional biochemical analyses such as staining, washing, and signal collection are miniaturized and integrated into chips fabricated from polymer or glass. Cell-based microfluidic lab-on-achip technology provides some obvious advantages: 1) drastically reduced sample and reagent requirement, and 2) separation and detection with improved sensitivity due to fluid properties at the microscale, i.e. laminar flow. Based on these two advantages, the obvious place where microfluidic cell assays will provide the most benefit is wherescientists must gather much information from precious little sample. Stem cells and other precious cell types such as circulating tumor cells (CTCs), and rare immune subsets are the perfect match for microfluidic multiplex assays. The recent demonstration that multiple cellular changes such as surface receptor activation, protein translocation, long and short RNA, and DNA changes can all be extracted from intact single cells paves the way to systems level understanding of cellular states during development or disease. Finally, with the ability to preserve cell integrity in a microfluidic device during multiplexed analysis, one also preserves the single cell resolution, where information regarding the cell-to-cell heterogeneity during differentiation or response to stimuli is vitally important.