Microfluidic chip-based cell electrophoresis with multipoint laser-induced fluorescence detection system

In this work, the electrophoretic mobility (EPM) measurement of individual cells was investigated by a simple on-chip electrophoresis system with LIF multipoint detection. The system enabled the characterization of cell electrophoresis behavior as well as the fluorescence signal from individual cells simultaneously. The measurement yielded the electropherograms of a large number of cells labeled with dye, in which the migration time and migration distance could be obtained easily. The EPM has been demonstrated to be different between the K562 cells and K562 cells treated with anticancer drug arsenic trioxide (As2O3). The K562 cells were found to exhibit a lower EPM compared to the cells after drug addition with different concentration. In this preliminary study, over 300 cells could be analyzed within 2 h, demonstrated a much higher analysis throughput compared with traditional methods. The established system is simple and fast, which is expected to be a promising method for evaluating cell surface properties and to be useful in clinical and pharmaceutical applications.