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Microfluidic Platform to Transduce Cell Viability to Distinct Flow Pathways for High-Accuracy Sensing.
Fatima Ezahra Chrit1, Abhishek Raj1, Katherine M Young2
1George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30332, United States.
ACS Sensors
|September 21, 2021
Summary
This study introduces a microfluidic device that uses cell biomechanics to sort cells and detect viability. This label-free method achieves high accuracy in distinguishing viable from nonviable cells.
Area of Science:
- Biophysics
- Cell Biology
- Microfluidics
Background:
- Cellular mechanical properties, like stiffness, serve as crucial biomarkers for assessing cell function, including viability.
- Traditional methods for cell viability assessment often require labels, which can interfere with cellular processes.
- Developing label-free techniques for cell analysis is essential for accurate and non-invasive biological studies.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop and validate a microfluidic device for label-free cell separation and viability detection.
- To investigate the use of cell biomechanics as a direct indicator of cell viability.
- To optimize microfluidic device design for enhanced sensitivity and accuracy in cell state determination.
Main Methods:
- Utilized a microfluidic device with skew ridges to deflect cell populations based on biomechanical properties.
- Employed cell deflection, interaction time, and size as sensor inputs for cell state analysis.
- Implemented sensitivity analysis and principal component analysis (PCA) to differentiate viable from nonviable cells.
- Evaluated ridge angles to maximize deflection differences between cell types.
Main Results:
- Achieved a high sensor performance with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.97 in differentiating viable and nonviable cells.
- Demonstrated effective cell separation and viability sensing in a label-free manner.
- PCA analysis further improved cell state identification, showing minimal overlap between viable and nonviable cell clusters.
Conclusions:
- Microfluidic separation devices are effective tools for high-sensitivity, label-free cell viability sensing.
- Cell biomechanics can be reliably transduced into separation signals for accurate cell state determination.
- This technology offers a promising approach for cell sorting and analysis in various biological applications.
