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Developing a microfluidic-based system to quantify cell capture efficiency

  • In Memoriam: Professor Ray Wu
  • Published:
Science in China Series C: Life Sciences Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Micro-fabrication technology has substantial potential for identifying molecular markers expressed on the surfaces of tissue cells and viruses. It has been found in several conceptual prototypes that cells with such markers are able to be captured by their antibodies immobilized on microchannel substrates and unbound cells are flushed out by a driven flow. The feasibility and reliability of such a microfluidic-based assay, however, remains to be further tested. In the current work, we developed a microfluidic-based system consisting of a microfluidic chip, an image grabbing unit, data acquisition and analysis software, as well as a supporting base. Specific binding of CD59-expressed or BSA-coupled human red blood cells (RBCs) to anti-CD59 or anti-BSA antibody-immobilized chip surfaces was quantified by capture efficiency and by the fraction of bound cells. Impacts of respective flow rate, cell concentration, antibody concentration and site density were tested systematically. The measured data indicated that the assay was robust. The robustness was further confirmed by capture efficiencies measured from an independent ELISA-based cell binding assay. These results demonstrated that the system developed provided a new platform to effectively quantify cellular surface markers effectively, which promoted the potential applications in both biological studies and clinical diagnoses.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Microgravity Laboratory and Center for Biomechanics and Bioengineering, Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100080, China

    Fan Yang, YuXin Gao, Yan Zhang, Juan Chen & Mian Long

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  1. Fan Yang
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  2. YuXin Gao
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  3. Yan Zhang
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  4. Juan Chen
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  5. Mian Long
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mian Long.

Additional information

Supported by the National Key Basic Research Program of China (Grant No. 2006CB910303), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 30730032 and 10332060), National High-Tech Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2007AA02Z306) and Chinese Academy of Sciences Grant (Grant No.2005-1-16)

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Yang, F., Gao, Y., Zhang, Y. et al. Developing a microfluidic-based system to quantify cell capture efficiency. SCI CHINA SER C 52, 173–181 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11427-009-0017-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11427-009-0017-4

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