SBIR Phase I: High Throughput Microfluidic Cell Injection for Cell Reprogramming

这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目支持旨在开发一种将材料输送到活细胞中的新技术的研究。在包括干细胞治疗和再生医学在内的许多生物应用和创新治疗方法中，将材料输送到活细胞中是一个有限的步骤。在这个项目中，探索了一种允许任何类型的分子高通量递送到任何类型的细胞的新技术。在这个创新的系统中，活细胞通过在微流体通道中流动而排列成一排，要传递的物质被一个微型流体射流射向细胞，该射流携带感兴趣的分子。预计这项研究将在干细胞研究和干细胞治疗领域产生更广泛的影响。特别是，这种基于微流体的系统有可能促进诱导多能干细胞（iPS）的产生，这是再生医学领域的后起之星，通过消除目前使这些细胞产生效率极低的细胞内递送问题。除了帮助生物医学界实现iPS的商业潜力外，这种新的细胞内递送技术的可用性可以使生物学的许多不同领域受益，从分子生物学到制药研究，并使许多新的研究应用成为可能。

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project supports research aimed at developing a new technology to deliver material into living cells. Delivery of material into living cells is a limiting step in a number of biological applications and innovative therapeutic approaches, including stem cells based therapy and regenerative medicine. In this project a novel technology to allow high throughput delivery of any type of molecule into any type of cell is explored. In this innovative system, living cells are lined up by flowing them in a microfluidic channel and the material to be delivered is shot on the cells with a miniaturized fluid jet that carries the molecules of interest.The broader impacts of this research are expected in the field of stem cell research and stem cell-based therapy. In particular, this microfluidic based system has the potential to boost the generation of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) , the rising star in the field of regenerative medicine, by eliminating the intracellular delivery problems that currently make generation of these cells extremely inefficient. Besides helping the biomedical community in realizing the commercial potential of iPS, the availability of the new intracellular delivery technology could benefit many different fields of biology, ranging from molecular biology to pharmaceutical research, and enable a number of new research applications.