HIGH-SPEED MICROFLUIDIC SORTING OF BIOHAZARDOUS CELLS.

描述(由申请人提供)： 针对生物恐怖主义的有效国防需要安全、快速地识别恐怖分子使用的病原体。我们将建造一种廉价的桌面细胞分选器(流式细胞仪)，用于在生物安全级别4的环境中快速、安全地处理生物危险细胞和材料。(BSL-4)。与其他“芯片上的IAB”设计不同，我们的设计承诺超高吞吐量，这是由于我们独特的(正在申请专利的)大规模串并联设计。我们估计，我们可以将单个稀有细胞从背景群体中分离出来，最高可达1000个，比目前的设计所允许的速度快了一倍。 我们的微型和大规模串并联设计的关键是我们已经消除了今天细胞分选机的复杂、笨重的激光器和光电倍增探测器设备。取而代之的是，我们将使用廉价的半导体光源，如LED、二极管激光器或VCEL，以及半导体光电探测器，如光电二极管、二极管阵列和CCD。事实上，通过在小像素群上应用滤光片，单个CCD可以分析整个发射光谱。 在第一阶段，我们将在相互竞争的微光子和微流体(阀门)方法中进行评估和选择。我们还将构建一台台式分选机的原型，并演示串并联II分拣的3个阶段。在这一阶段，我们将建造一个多阶段原型，由C.J.彼得斯博士的团队在UTMB SL-4实验室进行测试，这为我们提供了一个独特的机会，可以获得应用于生物防御应用的准确的生物安全测试系统，包括CDC A级病原体。 商业机会：我们的密封、便携和超高通量分选机将广泛用于生物防御以及干细胞治疗、基因组学、蛋白质组学和组合化学应用的细胞(或珠子或颗粒)的HTP分选。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Effective National Defense against bio-terrorism demands safe, rapid identification of the pathogens used by terrorists. We will build an inexpensive, table top, cell sorter (flow cytometer) for rapid, safe processing of bio-hazardous cells and materials in the Bio-safety Level-4 environment. (BSL-4). Unlike other "Iab-on-a-chip" designs, ours promises ultra-high-throughput, due to our unique, (patent pending) massively series-parallel design. We estimate we can separate single rare cells from background populations up to 1,OOO-fold faster than current designs allow. The key to our miniature and massively series-parallel design is that we have eliminated the complex, bulky lasers and photo-multiplier detector equipment of today's cell sorter. Instead, we will use cheap semiconductor light sources, such as LED's, diode lasers, or VCELS, and semiconductor photo-detectors, such as photodiodes, diode arrays, and CCD's. Indeed, with filter coating applied to small pixel clusters, a single CCD can analyze an entire emission spectrum. In Phase I we will evaluate and select among competing micro-photonic and micro-fluidic (valving) approaches. We will also build a bench-model prototype sorter and demonstrate 3 stages of series-parallel II sorting. In Phase ", we will build a multistage prototype for testing by Dr. C.J. Peters' team in the UTMB SL-4 laboratory This provides us a unique opportunity to obtain an accurate bio-safety testing system as applied to bio-defense applications, including CDC A-Level pathogens. Commercial Opportunities: Our sealed, portable, and ultra-high throughput sorter will find broad use in bio-defense and also in HTP sorting of cells (or beads, or particles) for stem cell therapy, genomics, proteomics, and combinatorial chemistry applications.