Convection-Enhanced Biopatterning with Recirculation of Hydrodynamically Confined Nanoliter Volumes of Reagents.

We present a new methodology for efficient and high-quality patterning of biological reagents for surface-based biological assays. The method relies on hydrodynamically confined nanoliter volumes of reagents to interact with the substrate at the micrometer-length scale. We study the interplay between diffusion, advection, and surface chemistry and present the design of a noncontact scanning microfluidic device to efficiently present reagents on surfaces. By leveraging convective flows, recirculation, and mixing of a processing liquid, this device overcomes limitations of existing biopatterning approaches, such as passive diffusion of analytes, uncontrolled wetting, and drying artifacts. We demonstrate the deposition of analytes, showing a 2- to 5-fold increase in deposition rate together with a 10-fold reduction in analyte consumption while ensuring less than 6% variation in pattern homogeneity on a standard biological substrate. In addition, we demonstrate the recirculation of a processing liquid using a microfluidic probe (MFP) in the context of a surface assay for (i) probing 12 independent areas with a single microliter of processing liquid and (ii) processing a 2 mm(2) surface to create 170 antibody spots of 50 × 100 µm(2) area using 1.6 µL of liquid. We observe high pattern quality, conservative usage of reagents, micrometer precision of localization and convection-enhanced fast deposition. Such a device and method may facilitate quantitative biological assays and spur the development of the next generation of protein microarrays.

Application of an improved magnetic immunosorbent in an Ephesia chip designed for circulating tumor cell capture.

In this study, we describe a particular step in developing a microfluidic device for capture and detection of circulating tumor cells-specifically the preparation of an immunosorbent for implementation into the separation chip. We highlight some of the most important specifics connected with superparamegnetic microspheres for microfluidic purposes. Factors such as nonspecific adsorption on microfluidic channels, interactions with model cell lines, and tendency to aggregation were investigated. Poly(glycidyl methacrylate) microspheres with carboxyl groups were employed for this purpose. To address the aforementioned challenges, the microspheres were coated with hydrazide-PEG-hydrazide, and subsequently anti-epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM) antibody was immobilized. The prepared anti-EpCAM immunosorbent was pretested using model cell lines with differing EpCAM density (MCF7, SKBR3, A549, and Raji) in a batchwise arrangement. Finally, the entire system was implemented and studied in an Ephesia chip and an evaluation was performed by the MCF7 cell line.

Hierarchical hydrodynamic flow confinement: efficient use and retrieval of chemicals for microscale chemistry on surfaces.

We devised, implemented, and tested a new concept for efficient local surface chemistry that we call hierarchical hydrodynamic flow confinement (hierarchical HFC). This concept leverages the hydrodynamic shaping of multiple layers of liquid to address challenges inherent to microscale surface chemistry, such as minimal dilution, economical consumption of reagent, and fast liquid switching. We illustrate two modes of hierarchical HFC, nested and pinched, by locally denaturing and recovering a 26 bp DNA with as little as 2% dilution and by efficiently patterning an antibody on a surface, with a 5 µm resolution and a 100-fold decrease of reagent consumption compared to microcontact printing. In addition, valveless switching between nanoliter volumes of liquids was achieved within 20 ms. We believe hierarchical HFC will have broad utility for chemistry on surfaces at the microscale.

Microfluidic: an innovative tool for efficient cell sorting.

At first mostly dedicated to molecular analysis, microfluidic systems are rapidly expanding their range of applications towards cell biology, thanks to their ability to control the mechanical, biological and fluidic environment at the scale of the cells. A number of new concepts based on microfluidics were indeed proposed in the last ten years for cell sorting. For many of these concepts, progress remains to be done regarding automation, standardization, or throughput, but it is now clear that microfluidics will have a major contribution to the field, from fundamental research to point-of-care diagnosis. We present here an overview of cells sorting in microfluidics, with an emphasis on circulating tumor cells. Sorting principles are classified in two main categories, methods based on physical properties of the cells, such as size, deformability, electric or optical properties, and methods based on biomolecular properties, notably specific surface antigens. We document potential applications, discuss the main advantages and limitations of different approaches, and tentatively outline the main remaining challenges in this fast evolving field.

Selective local lysis and sampling of live cells for nucleic acid analysis using a microfluidic probe.

Heterogeneity is inherent to biology, thus it is imperative to realize methods capable of obtaining spatially-resolved genomic and transcriptomic profiles of heterogeneous biological samples. Here, we present a new method for local lysis of live adherent cells for nucleic acid analyses. This method addresses bottlenecks in current approaches, such as dilution of analytes, one-sample-one-test, and incompatibility to adherent cells. We make use of a scanning probe technology - a microfluidic probe - and implement hierarchical hydrodynamic flow confinement (hHFC) to localize multiple biochemicals on a biological substrate in a non-contact, non-destructive manner. hHFC enables rapid recovery of nucleic acids by coupling cell lysis and lysate collection. We locally lysed ~300 cells with chemical systems adapted for DNA or RNA and obtained lysates of ~70 cells/µL for DNA analysis and ~15 cells/µL for mRNA analysis. The lysates were introduced into PCR-based workflows for genomic and transcriptomic analysis. This strategy further enabled selective local lysis of subpopulations in a co-culture of MCF7 and MDA-MB-231 cells, validated by characteristic E-cadherin gene expression in individually extracted cell types. The developed strategy can be applied to study cell-cell, cell-matrix interactions locally, with implications in understanding growth, progression and drug response of a tumor.

High purity microfluidic sorting and analysis of circulating tumor cells: towards routine mutation detection.

A new generation of the Ephesia cell capture technology optimized for CTC capture and genetic analysis is presented, characterized in depth and compared with the CellSearch system as a reference. This technology uses magnetic particles bearing tumour-cell specific EpCAM antibodies, self-assembled in a regular array in a microfluidic flow cell. 48,000 high aspect-ratio columns are generated using a magnetic field in a high throughput (>3 ml h(-1)) device and act as sieves to specifically capture the cells of interest through antibody-antigen interactions. Using this device optimized for CTC capture and analysis, we demonstrated the capture of epithelial cells with capture efficiency above 90% for concentrations as low as a few cells per ml. We showed the high specificity of capture with only 0.26% of non-epithelial cells captured for concentrations above 10 million cells per ml. We investigated the capture behavior of cells in the device, and correlated the cell attachment rate with the EpCAM expression on the cell membranes for six different cell lines. We developed and characterized a two-step blood processing method to allow for rapid processing of 10 ml blood tubes in less than 4 hours, and showed a capture rate of 70% for as low as 25 cells spiked in 10 ml blood tubes, with less than 100 contaminating hematopoietic cells. Using this device and procedure, we validated our system on patient samples using an automated cell immunostaining procedure and a semi-automated cell counting method. Our device captured CTCs in 75% of metastatic prostate cancer patients and 80% of metastatic breast cancer patients, and showed similar or better results than the CellSearch device in 10 out of 13 samples. Finally, we demonstrated the possibility of detecting cancer-related PIK3CA gene mutation in 20 cells captured in the chip with a good correlation between the cell count and the quantitation value Cq of the post-capture qPCR.

PEGylation of magnetic poly(glycidyl methacrylate) microparticles for microfluidic bioassays.

In this study, magnetic poly(glycidyl methacrylate) microparticles containing carboxyl groups (PGMA-COOH) were coated using highly hydrophilic polymer poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG). PEG was used to reduce nonspecific interactions with proteins and cells while decreasing adhesion of particles to the walls of a microfluidic devices from poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) and cyclic olefin copolymer (COC). Zeta potential measurement, infrared spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, anti-PEG ELISA assay, and bioaffinity interactions between biotin and streptavidin-HRP successfully proved the presence of PEG on the surface of microspheres. Both neat and PEGylated microspheres were then incubated with the inert protein bovine serum albumin or cells to evaluate the rate of nonspecific adsorption (NSA). PEG with Mr of 30,000 Da was responsible for 45% reduction in NSA of proteins and 74% for cells compared to neat particles. The microspheres' behavior in PDMS and COC microchannels was then evaluated. Aggregation and adhesion of PEGylated microspheres significantly decreased compared to neat particles. Finally, the model enzyme horseradish peroxidase was immobilized on the microspheres through the heterobifunctional PEG chain. The possibility for subsequent covalent coupling of the ligand of interest was confirmed. Such PEGylated microparticles can be efficiently used in PDMS microchips as a carrier for bioaffinity separation or of enzyme for catalysis.

Albumin-coated monodisperse magnetic poly(glycidyl methacrylate) microspheres with immobilized antibodies: application to the capture of epithelial cancer cells.

Monodisperse (4 µm) macroporous crosslinked poly(glycidyl methacrylate) (PGMA) microspheres for use in microfluidic immunomagnetic cell sorting, with a specific application to the capture of circulating tumor cells (CTCs), were prepared by multistep swelling polymerization in the presence of cyclohexyl acetate porogen and hydrolyzed and ammonolyzed. Iron oxide was then precipitated in the microspheres to render them magnetic. Repeated precipitation made possible to raise the iron oxide content to more than 30 wt %. To minimize nonspecific adsorption of the microspheres in a microchannel and of cells on the microspheres, they were coated with albumin crosslinked with glutaraldehyde. Antibodies of epithelial cell adhesion molecule (anti-EpCAM) were then immobilized on the albumin-coated magnetic microspheres using the carbodiimide method. Capture of breast cancer MCF7 cells as a model of CTCs by the microspheres with immobilized anti-EpCAM IgG was performed in a batch experiment. Finally, MCF7 cells were captured by the anti-EpCAM-immobilized albumin-coated magnetic microspheres in an Ephesia chip. A very good rejection of lymphocytes was achieved. Thus, albumin-coated monodisperse magnetic PGMA microspheres with immobilized anti-EpCAM seem to be promising for capture of CTCs in a microfluidic device.

Design, modeling and characterization of microfluidic architectures for high flow rate, small footprint microfluidic systems.

We propose a strategy for optimizing distribution of flow in a microfluidic chamber for microreactor, lateral flow assay and immunocapture applications. It is aimed at maximizing flow throughput, while keeping footprint, cell thickness, and shear stress in the distribution channels at a minimum, and offering a uniform flow field along the whole analysis chamber. In order to minimize footprint, the traditional tree-like or "rhombus" design, in which distribution microchannels undergo a series of splittings into two subchannels with equal lengths and widths, was replaced by a design in which subchannel lengths are unequal, and widths are analytically adapted within the Hele-Shaw approximation, in order to keep the flow resistance uniform along all flow paths. The design was validated by hydrodynamic flow simulation using COMSOL finite element software. Simulations show that, if the channel is too narrow, the Hele-Shaw approximation loses accuracy, and the flow velocity in the chamber can fluctuate by up to 20%. We thus used COMSOL simulation to fine-tune the channel parameters, and obtained a fluctuation of flow velocity across the whole chamber below 10%. The design was then implemented into a PDMS device, and flow profiles were measured experimentally using particle tracking. Finally, we show that this system can be applied to cell sorting in self-assembling magnetic arrays, increasing flow throughput by a factor 100 as compared to earlier reported designs.