Reimagining Flow Cytometric Cell Sorting

Bio-Sprayed/Threaded Microalgae Remain Viable and Indistinguishable from Controls

Microalgae are increasingly playing a significant role in many areas of research and development. Recent studies have demonstrated their ability to aid wound healing by their ability to generate oxygen, aiding the healing process. Bearing this in mind, the capability to spray/spin deposit microalgae in suspension (solution) or compartmentalize living microalgae within architectures such as fibers/scaffolds and beads, would have significance as healing mechanisms for addressing a wide range of wounds. Reconstructing microalgae-bearing architectures as either scaffolds or beads could be generated via electric field (bio-electrospraying and cell electrospinning) and non-electric field (aerodynamically assisted bio-jetting/threading) driven technologies. However, before studying the biomechanical properties of the generated living architectures, the microalgae exposed to these techniques must be interrogated from a molecular level upward first, to establish these techniques, have no negative effects brought on the processed microalgae. Therefore these studies, demonstrate the ability of both these jetting and threading technologies to directly handle living microalgae, in suspension or within a polymeric suspension, safely, and form algae-bearing architectures such as beads and fibers/scaffolds.

Squeezed state in the hydrodynamic focusing regime for Escherichia coli bacteria detection

Flow cytometry is an essential technique in single particle analysis and cell sorting for further downstream diagnosis, exhibiting high-throughput and multiplexing capabilities for many biological and biomedical applications. Although many hydrodynamic focusing-based microfluidic cytometers have been demonstrated with reduced size and cost to adapt to point-of-care settings, the operating conditions are not characterized systematically. This study presents the flow transition process in the hydrodynamic focusing mechanism when the flow rate or the Reynolds number increases. The characteristics of flow fields and mass transport were studied under various operating conditions, including flow rates and microchannel heights. A transition from the squeezed focusing state to the over-squeezed anti-focusing state in the hydrodynamic focusing regime was observed when the Reynolds number increased above 30. Parametric studies illustrated that the focusing width increased with the Reynolds number but decreased with the microchannel height in the over-squeezed state. The microfluidic cytometric analyses using microbeads and E. coli show that the recovery rate was maintained by limiting the Reynolds number to 30. The detailed analysis of the flow transition will provide new insight into microfluidic cytometric analyses with a broad range of applications in food safety, water monitoring and healthcare sectors.

Laser Capture Microdissection: A Gear for Pancreatic Cancer Research

The advancement in molecular techniques has been attributed to the quality and significance of cancer research. Pancreatic cancer (PC) is one of the rare cancers with aggressive behavior and a high mortality rate. The asymptomatic nature of the disease until its advanced stage has resulted in late diagnosis as well as poor prognosis. The heterogeneous character of PC has complicated cancer development and progression studies. The analysis of bulk tissues of the disease was insufficient to understand the disease, hence, the introduction of the single-cell separating technique aided researchers to decipher more about the specific cell population of tumors. This review gives an overview of the Laser Capture Microdissection (LCM) technique, one of the single-cell separation methods used in PC research.

Polymer-Coated Magnetic Microspheres Conjugated with Growth Factor Receptor Binding Peptides Enable Cell Sorting

The separation and sorting of human cells is an important step in the bioprocessing of cell-based therapeutics. Heterogeneous mixtures of cells must be sorted to isolate the desired cell type and purify the final product. This process is often achieved by antibody-based sorting techniques. In this work, we demonstrate that magnetic microspheres may be functionalized with peptides that selectively bind to cells on the basis of their relative concentration of specific surface proteins. Five-micrometer-magnetic microspheres were coated with the synthetic copolymer PVG (poly(poly(ethylene glycol)methyl ether methacrylate-ran-vinyl dimethyl azlactone-ran-glycidyl methacrylate) and functionalized with the vascular endothelial growth factor receptor binding peptide (VRBP), which binds to the vascular endothelial growth factor receptor (VEGFR). These microspheres exhibited low cytotoxicity and bind to cells depending on their relative surface protein expression. Finally, coated, magnetic microspheres were used to separate heterogeneous populations of cells dependent on their VEGFR expression through magnetic-assisted cell sorting (MACS), demonstrating that peptide-based cell sorting mechanisms may be useful in the bioprocessing of human-cell-based products.

Photolithographic Patterning of FluorAcryl for Biphilic Microwell-Based Digital Bioassays and Selection of Bacteria

FluorAcryl 3298 (FA) is a UV-curable fluoroacrylate polymer commonly employed as a chemically resistant, hydrophobic, and oleophobic coating. Here, FA was used in a cleanroom-based microstructuring process to fabricate hydrophilic-in-hydrophobic (HiH) micropatterned surfaces containing femtoliter-sized well arrays. A short protocol involving direct UV photopatterning, an etching step, and final recovery of the hydrophobic properties of the polymer produced patterned substrates with micrometer resolution. Specifically, HiH microwell arrays were obtained with a well diameter of 10 μm and various well depths ranging from 300 nm to 1 μm with high reproducibility. The 300 nm deep microdroplet array (MDA) substrates were used for digital immunoassays, which presented a limit of detection in the attomolar range. This demonstrated the chemical functionality of the hydrophilic and hydrophobic surfaces. Furthermore, the 1 μm deep wells could efficiently capture particles such as bacteria, whereas the 300 nm deep substrates or other types of flat HiH molecular monolayers could not. Capturing a mixture of bacteria expressing red- and green-fluorescent proteins, respectively, served as a model for screening and selection of specific phenotypes using FA-MDAs. Here, green-fluorescent bacteria were specifically selected by overlaying a solution of gelatin methacryloyl (GelMA) mixed with a photoinitiator and using a high-magnification objective, together with custom pinholes, in a common fluorescence microscope to cross-link the hydrogel around the bacteria of interest. In conclusion, due to the straightforward processing, versatility, and low-price, FA is an advantageous alternative to more commonly used fluorinated materials, such as CYTOP or Teflon-AF, for the fabrication of HiH microwell arrays and other biphilic microstructures.