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A microfluidic digital single-cell assay for the evaluation of anticancer drugs

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Abstract

Digital single-cell assays hold high potentials for the analysis of cell apoptosis and the evaluation of chemotherapeutic reagents for cancer therapy. In this paper, a microfluidic hydrodynamic trapping system was developed for digital single-cell assays with the capability of monitoring cellular dynamics over time. The microfluidic chip was designed with arrays of bypass structures for trapping individual cells without the need for surface modification, external electric force, or robotic equipment. After optimization of the bypass structure by both numerical simulations and experiments, a single-cell trapping efficiency of ∼90 % was achieved. We demonstrated the method as a digital single-cell assay for the evaluation of five clinically established chemotherapeutic reagents. As a result, the half maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) values of these compounds could be conveniently determined. We further modeled the gradual decrease of active drugs over time which was often observed in vivo after an injection to investigate cell apoptosis against chemotherapeutic reagents. The developed method provided a valuable means for cell apoptotic analysis and evaluation of anticancer drugs.

A microfluidic hydrodynamic trapping system was developed for digital single-cell assays with the capability of drug evaluation

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Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the National Basic Research Program of China (2011CB910403) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (30970692, 21075045, and 21275060).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Britton Chance Center for Biomedical Photonics at Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics—Hubei Bioinformatics & Molecular Imaging Key Laboratory, Systems Biology Theme, Department of Biomedical Engineering, College of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, 430074, Wuhan, China

    Yao Wang, Xiaojun Feng, Chao Liu, Peng Chen, Dongjuan Chen & Bi-Feng Liu

  2. Stem cell Engineering Research Center, School of Medicine, Anhui University of Science and Technology, 232001, Huainan, China

    Xiaolong Tang

  3. Department of Laboratory Medicine, Tianjin Medical College, 300222, Tianjin, China

    Xiaolong Tang

Authors
  1. Yao Wang
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  2. Xiaolong Tang
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  3. Xiaojun Feng
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Correspondence to Xiaojun Feng.

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Wang, Y., Tang, X., Feng, X. et al. A microfluidic digital single-cell assay for the evaluation of anticancer drugs. Anal Bioanal Chem 407, 1139–1148 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-014-8325-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-014-8325-3

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