Microfluidic Cell Chips Customization and Processing
Cells are the basic units of organisms and life activities. Cell analysis is of great significance for the study of cell structure and function, the exploration of the laws and essence of life activities, the diagnosis and treatment of diseases, and the screening and design of drugs. Microfluidic technology has been widely used in the research of cell-related fields, including cell culture, cell capture, cell differentiation, cell migration, cell fusion, drug metabolism, cell communication, tissue engineering, etc.
Advantages of Microfluidic Chips for Cell Analysis
- The size of the microchannel is equivalent to the size of the cell, and the study of cells on the microfluidic chip can go deep into the single cell or even subcellular level.
- The micro-sized channel, multi-dimensional network structure and relatively closed environment are close to the physiological state in the body, and can realize non-destructive or minimally destructive detection.
- The flat-plate geometric configuration is convenient for observation and detection; and the heat and mass transfer are rapid, which improves the accuracy and sensitivity of the analysis.
- Many cell research operation steps can be integrated on the same chip, which is conducive to parallel operation and continuous analysis.
- It can meet the needs of high-throughput cell analysis and obtain a lot of biological information at the same time.
- The design of the chip is flexible and can be integrated or combined with related analytical instruments.
- Save time, samples and reagents, helping to reduce research costs.
Applications of Microfluidic Cell Chips
- Cell Manipulation
Microfluidic chip cell manipulation is to transport the cell to a predetermined site, fix it, and analyze the cell composition, structure, and function. It also includes the isolation and screening of target cells. Transporting and fixing biological cells on microfluidic chips requires simple and efficient operation while maintaining cell activity. The main methods of cell manipulation on microfluidic chip are mechanical manipulation, optical manipulation, electronic manipulation, and magnetic manipulation.
- Cell Culture
Cell culture refers to a culture technology that extracts cells from the body, simulates the living environment in the body, and makes them grow and reproduce while maintaining structure and function under sterile, appropriate temperature, pH, and certain nutritional conditions. Cell culture often uses flasks or microplates. However, the cells are small in size, and the culture environment provided by these traditional plates is obviously far from the in vivo environment, and it is difficult to truly reflect the biological characteristics of the cells in the physiological state. Microfluidic chips have a relatively closed multi-dimensional network structure, the channel size is comparable to the cell size, and there are many materials for chip manufacturing and flexible structural design, so they are increasingly used in cell culture.
- Single Cell Component Analysis
The intracellular components are complex. The analysis and determination of intracellular components and the study of the interaction between cellular components are helpful to understand the metabolic process, intracellular signal transduction and cellular function in vivo. It is of great significance for disease treatment and drug screening. The emergence of microfluidic chip technology provides a good technical platform for intracellular component analysis.
If you need microfluidic cell chips processing and customized services, please feel free to contact our experts for a free consultation.
References
- Huang, S.B.; et al. An integrated microfluidic cell culture system for high-throughput perfusion three-dimensional cell culture-based assays: effect of cell culture model on the results of chemosensitivity assays. Lab on a Chip. 2013;13(6):1133-43.
- Ito H, Kaneko M. On-chip cell manipulation and applications to deformability measurements. ROBOMECH journal. 2020 Jan 13;7(1):3.
- Bale SS, Borenstein JT. Microfluidic cell culture platforms to capture hepatic physiology and complex cellular interactions. Drug Metabolism and Disposition. 2018 Nov 1;46(11):1638-46.
- Xu, X.; et al. Microfluidic single‐cell omics analysis. Small. 2020 Mar;16(9):1903905.
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