Abstract
High-throughput single-cell analysis based on physical properties (such as morphology or mechanics) is emerging as a powerful tool to inform clinical research, with a great potential for translation towards diagnosis. Here we present a novel microfluidic approach adopting acoustic waves to manipulate and mechanically stimulate single cells, and interferometry to track changes in the morphology and measure size, deformability, and refractive index of non-adherent cells. The method is based on the integration within the acoustofluidic channel of a low-finesse Fabry–Perot resonator, providing very high sensitivity and a speed potentially suitable to obtain the high-throughput necessary to handle the variability stemming from the biological diversity of single cells. The proposed approach is applied to a set of different samples: reference polystyrene beads, algae and yeast. The results demonstrate the capability of the acoustofluidic interferometric device to detect and quantify optomechanical properties of single cells with a throughput suitable to address label-free single-cell clinical analysis.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank: Dr. Marco Sartore (ElbaTech SRL) for the support provided with the experiment’s electronics; Dr. Chiara Gambardella (National Research Council, Genova, Italy) for providing the Tetraslmis samples; Dr. Stéphane Barland (UCA Nice), Prof. Dr. Jochen Guck (Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light) and Dr. Salvatore Girardo (Biotechnology Center—Technische Universität Dresden) for fruitful discussions. J.M.M. acknowledges support from the Mexican Council of Science and Technology (CONACyT) for financial support (Scholarship No. 471712) and funding for international mobility France–Italy provided by the Université Franco Italienne (UFI, Project No.C2-1031). In addition, thanks are due to Prof. Dr. Kevin Braeckmans and Prof Dr.Stefaan De Smedt (LGBPP Ghent University) for current support. PGJ gratefully acknowledges fellowship funding by the UK EPSRC (No. EP/L025035/1). This work has also been supported by the French government through the UCAJEDI Investments in the Future project managed by the National Research Agency (ANR) with Reference No. ANR-15-IDEX-01.
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Mejía Morales, J., Glynne-Jones, P., Vassalli, M. et al. Acoustofluidic interferometric device for rapid single-cell physical phenotyping. Eur Biophys J 51, 185–191 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00249-021-01585-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00249-021-01585-7