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Microfluidic Single-cell Trapping and Cultivation for the Analysis of Host-viral Interactions

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Abstract

The isolation of single cells and their further cultivation in confined chambers are essential to the collection of statistically reliable temporal information in cell-based biological experiments. In this work, we present a hydrodynamic single-cell trapping and culturing platform that facilitates biological analysis and experimentation of virus infection into host cells. To find the optimum design of the cell trap at the microscale, we evaluated hook traps with different widths and trap intervals to obtain a high trapping efficiency of a single cell. The proposed design leverages the stochastic position of the cells as they flow into the structured microfluidic channels, where hundreds of single cells are then arrayed in nanoliter chambers for simultaneous cell-specific data collection. Optimum design is used to devise and implement a hydrodynamic cell-trapping mechanism that is minimally detrimental to the cell viability and retains a high trapping efficiency (90%), with the capability of reaching high fill factors (90%) in short loading times (10 min) in a 450-trap device. Finally, we perform an analysis of host-viral interactions under the treatment of a drug concentration gradient as a proof of concept.

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Acknowldgements

This research was supported by Chungnam National University research fund.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Neither ethical approval nor informed consent was required for this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry, Chungnam National University, Daejeon, 34134, Korea

    Reya Ganguly, Byungjin Lee, Solib Kang, Yong Sic Kim, Seong-Geun Jeong, Jae Seong Kim, So Young Park & Chang-Soo Lee

  2. School of Cellular & Molecular Medicine, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

    Yamauchi Yohei

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  1. Reya Ganguly
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  2. Byungjin Lee
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  3. Solib Kang
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Correspondence to Chang-Soo Lee.

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Ganguly, R., Lee, B., Kang, S. et al. Microfluidic Single-cell Trapping and Cultivation for the Analysis of Host-viral Interactions. Biotechnol Bioproc E 26, 179–187 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12257-020-0143-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12257-020-0143-1

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