THz Spectroscopy for a Rapid and Label-Free Cell Viability Assay in a Microfluidic Chip Based on an Optical Clearing Agent
THz Spectroscopy for a Rapid and Label-Free Cell Viability Assay in a Microfluidic Chip Based on an Optical Clearing Agent
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太赫兹光谱在基于光学透明剂的微流控芯片中进行快速、无标记的细胞活力测定
DOI：
10.1021/acs.analchem.8b03665
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发表时间：
2019-01-01
影响因子：
7.4
通讯作者：
Fu, Weiling
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Yang, Ke;Yang, Xiang;Fu, Weiling
简单、快速、高效的细胞活性检测在许多生物医学研究中发挥着重要作用，包括细胞毒理学研究和抗肿瘤药物筛选。在这里，我们首次展示了一种结合新的光学清洗剂(OCA)和微流控技术的快速、无标记的细胞活力检测方法。这一策略使用吸收能力相当低的OCA来取代活细胞周围的高吸收水分子，从而减少背景信号干扰。筛选出三种可能的OCA候选低粘度油，其中氟化油因其较低的吸收率和最低的细胞毒性而被选中。在微流控芯片中用氟化油代替液体介质后，观察到有无活细胞的氟化油有明显的太赫兹光谱差异。这种太赫兹响应的变化初步归因于细胞和氟化油之间的可区分信号。此外，我们还将该方法应用于人乳腺癌细胞(MDA-MB-231)经不同抗癌药物处理后的细胞活性检测。结果表明，在水置换策略的辅助下，太赫兹光谱具有快速、无标记、无损的优点，为开发方便实用的细胞分析平台提供了良好的定量细胞活性的方法。
Simple, rapid, and efficient cell viability assays play a fundamental role in much of biomedical research, including cell toxicology investigations and antitumor drug screening. Here, we demonstrate for the first time a rapid and label-free cell viability assay using THz spectroscopy in combination with a new optical clearing agent (OCA) and microfluidic technology. This strategy uses a considerably less absorptive OCA to replace the highly absorptive water molecules around the living cells and thus to decrease the background signal interference. Three low-viscosity oils were screened as potential OCA candidates, among which fluorinated oil was selected because of its lower absorption and lowest cytotoxicity. After the liquid medium was replaced with fluorinated oil in a microfluidic chip, an obvious THz spectral difference was observed between the fluorinated oils with and without living cells. This change in THz response was preliminarily attributed to the distinguishable signals between the cells and the fluorinated oil. In addition, we applied this method to cell viability assays of human breast cancer cells (MDA-MB-231) after treatment with different antitumor drugs. The results indicated that THz spectroscopy with the aid of the proposed water-replacement strategy presented excellent quantification of cell viability with the advantages of a rapid, label-free, nondestructive microassay, which offers significant potential to developing a convenient and practical cell analysis platform.