Cell-based shear stress sensor for bioprocessing.

Shear stress during bioreactor cultivation has significant impact on cell health, growth, and fate. Mammalian cells, such as T cells and stem cells, in next-generation cell therapies are especially more sensitive to shear stress present in their culture environment than bacteria. Therefore, a base knowledge about the shear stress imposed by the bioprocesses is needed to optimize the process parameters and enhance cell growth and yield. However, typical computational flow dynamics modeling or PCR-based assays have several limitations. Implementing and interpreting computational modeling often requires technical specialties and also relies on many simplifications in modeling. PCR-based assays evaluating changes in gene expression involve cumbersome sample preparation with the use of advanced lab equipment and technicians, hampering rapid and straightforward assessment of shear stress. Here, we developed a simple, cell-based shear stress sensor for measuring shear stress levels in different bioreactor types and operating conditions. We engineered a CHO-DG44 cell line to make its stress sensitive promoter EGR-1 control GFP expression. Subsequently, the stressed CHO cells were transferred into a 96 well plate, and their GFP levels (population mean fluorescence) were monitored using a cell analysis instrument (Incucyte®, Sartorius Stedim Biotech) over 24 hours. After conducting sensor characterization, which included chemical induced stress and fluid shear stress, and stability investigation, we tested the shear stress sensor in the Ambr® 250 bioreactor vessels (Sartorius Stedim Biotech) with different impeller and vessel designs. The results showed that the CHO cell-based shear stress sensors expressed higher GFP levels in response to higher shear stress magnitude or exposure time. These sensors are useful tools to assess shear stress imposed by bioreactor conditions and can facilitate the design of various bioreactor vessels with a low shear stress profile.

Non-invasive real-time monitoring of cell concentration and viability using Doppler ultrasound.

Bioprocess optimization towards higher productivity and better quality control relies on real-time process monitoring tools to measure process and culture parameters. Cell concentration and viability are among the most important parameters to be monitored during bioreactor operations that are typically determined using optical methods on an extracted sample. In this paper, we have developed an online non-invasive sensor to measure cell concentration and viability based on Doppler ultrasound. An ultrasound transducer is mounted outside the bioreactor vessel and emits a high frequency tone burst (15 MHz) through the vessel wall. Acoustic backscatter from cells in the bioreactor depends on cell concentration and viability. The backscattered signal is collected through the same transducer and analyzed using multivariate data analysis (MVDA) to characterize and predict the cell culture properties. We have developed accurate MVDA models to predict the Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cell concentration in a broad range from 0.1 × 106 cells/mL to 100 × 106 cells/mL, and cell viability from 3% to 99%. The non-invasive monitoring is ideal for single use bioreactor and the in-situ measurements removes the burden for offline sampling and dilution steps. This method can be similarly applied to other suspension cell culture modalities.

Electrically-Induced Actuation of Acrylic-Based Dielectric Elastomers in Excess of 500% Strain.

Conventional robots are typically actuated by hard actuators, while biological entities consist mostly of soft muscles. Being soft imparts a functionality of compliance, thereby greatly enhancing the range of actuation and the degrees of freedom. Here, we demonstrate a soft electromechanically-active polymer capable of an electrically-induced linear strain beyond 500% that is continuously tunable by voltage. Previous experiments on the same material have demonstrated that by harnessing and bypassing electromechanical instability, soft electroactive polymers may bi-stably switch between an actuated state and an uncharged state of about 323% linear strain. In this paper, we use theory to inspire the possibility of suppressing electromechanical instability using pre-stretch by applying a non-isotropic pre-stretch onto the membrane, so as to achieve an ultra-large actuation strain that is continuously tunable by voltage. This geometry that enables such a large magnitude of actuation is simple and highly amenable to integration in robotic systems. With an electrically-induced strain of at least two orders of magnitude larger than conventional actuators, we expect our demonstration to expand the range of application for soft actuators.

A versatile microfluidic device for high throughput production of microparticles and cell microencapsulation.

Biocompatible microparticles are valuable tools in biomedical research for applications such as drug delivery, cell transplantation therapy, and analytical assays. However, their translation into clinical research and the pharmaceutical industry has been slow due to the lack of techniques that can produce microparticles with controlled physicochemical properties at high throughput. We introduce a robust microfluidic platform for the production of relatively homogeneous microdroplets at a generation frequency of up to 3.1 MHz, which is about three orders of magnitude higher than the production rate of a conventional microfluidic drop maker. We demonstrated the successful implementation of our device for production of biocompatible microparticles with various crosslinking mechanisms and cell microencapsulation with high cell viability.

Investigating the fluid dynamics of rapid processes within microfluidic devices using bright-field microscopy.

The widespread application of microfluidic devices in the biological and chemical sciences requires the implementation of complex designs and geometries, which in turn leads to atypical fluid dynamic phenomena. Accordingly, a complete understanding of fluid dynamics in such systems is key in the facile engineering of novel and efficient analytical tools. Herein, we present an accurate approach for studying the fluid dynamics of rapid processes within microfluidic devices using bright-field microscopy with white light illumination and a standard high-speed camera. Specifically, we combine Ghost Particle Velocimetry and the detection of moving objects in automated video surveillance to track submicron size tracing particles via cross correlation between the speckle patterns of successive images. The efficacy of the presented technique is demonstrated by measuring the flow field over a square pillar (80 µm × 80 µm) in a 200 µm wide microchannel at high volumetric flow rates. Experimental results are in excellent agreement with those obtained via computational fluid dynamics simulations. The method is subsequently used to study the dynamics of droplet generation at a flow focusing microfluidic geometry. A unique feature of the presented technique is the ability to perform velocimetry analysis of high-speed phenomena, which is not possible using micron-resolution particle image velocimetry (µPIV) approaches based on confocal or fluorescence microscopy.

A droplet-based heterogeneous immunoassay for screening single cells secreting antigen-specific antibodies.

High throughput heterogeneous immunoassays that screen antigen-specific antibody secreting cells are essential to accelerate monoclonal antibody discovery for therapeutic applications. Here, we introduce a heterogeneous single cell immunoassay based on alginate microparticles as permeable cell culture chambers. Using a microfluidic device, we encapsulated single antibody secreting cells in 35-40 µm diameter alginate microbeads. We functionalized the alginate to capture the secreted antibodies inside the microparticles, enabling single cell analysis and preventing the cross-talk between the neighboring encapsulated cells. We demonstrated non-covalent functionalization of alginate microparticles by adding three secondary antibodies to the alginate solution to form high molecular weight complexes that become trapped in the porous nanostructure of alginate and capture the secreted antibodies. We screened anti-TNF-alpha antibody-secreting cells from a mixture of antibody-secreting cells.