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Updated: Aug 26, 2025
Microfluidic Buffer Exchange for Interference-free Micro/Nanoparticle Cell Engineering
Published on: July 10, 2016
Synergetic collision and space separation in microfluidic chip for efficient affinity-discriminated molecular
Junxia Wang1,2, Liang Li1, Yingkun Zhang1
1The MOE Key Laboratory of Spectrochemical Analysis & Instrumentation, the Key Laboratory of Chemical Biology of Fujian Province, State Key Laboratory of Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces, Department of Chemical Biology, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University, Xiamen 361005, China.
Abstract:
Efficient molecular selection is a prerequisite for generating molecular tools used in diagnosis, pathology, vaccinology, and therapeutics. Selection efficiency is thermodynamically highly dependent on the dissociation equilibrium that can be reached in a single round. Extreme shifting of equilibrium towards dissociation favors the retention of high-affinity ligands over those with lower affinity, thus improving the selection efficiency. We propose to synergize dual effects by deterministic lateral-displacement microfluidics, including the collision-based force effect and the two-dimensional (2D) separation-based concentration effect, to greatly shift the equilibrium. Compared with previous approaches, this system can remove more low- or moderate-affinity ligands and maintain most high-affinity ligands, thereby improving affinity discrimination in selection. This strategy is demonstrated on phage display in both experiment and simulation, and two peptides against tumor markers ephrin type-A receptor 2 (EphA2) and CD71 were obtained with high affinity and specificity within a single round of selection, which offers a promising direction for discovery of robust binding ligands for a wide range of biomedical applications.
