Universal Precision Tool for Single Cell Capture, Conditioning, and Dispensing

描述(申请人提供)：单细胞生物学提供了一种新的途径来获得生物学洞察力，而这种洞察力已经被来自大细胞群体的总体平均所掩盖。在单细胞水平上研究生物学不仅可以加深我们对复杂的生物机制的理解，还有助于开发出治疗人类疾病的新疗法和药物。为了支持单细胞分析，新的工具具有非凡的精确度、灵活性、 和能力必须得到发展。尽管微流控装置已被证明是研究单个细胞的一个非常有前途的平台，但当今微流控技术的一个严重限制 单细胞装置是指微流控环境中的细胞与标准培养环境中的细胞有很大的不同，更不同于生理环境中的细胞。我们建议开发一种通用的微流控单电池点胶和调理装置来解决这一重要限制。该设备具有创新的架构，在一个微流控平台上集成了不同的功能，包括单细胞检测、捕获、调节和释放。由于所有功能的现场可编程门阵列(现场可编程门阵列)控制和协调，建议的设备将以闭环方式运行，一旦指定了用户应用程序，就不需要用户干预。除了这些独特的功能外，所提出的设备还可以以非常低的成本制造，完全自动化，与工业标准兼容，并扩展为阵列格式，以实现超高吞吐量。拟议的设备旨在成为一种工具，将被进行基础和临床研究的研究人员广泛使用，这些研究人员受益于单细胞研究。由于单细胞生物学在生物学和医学的许多领域都很流行，随着未来需求的增加，所提出的装置有望满足生物医学的主要需求。如果开发成功，该设备将促进和加速癌症和干细胞研究、新细胞疗法、药物筛选和测试、传染病和遗传疾病、细胞-细胞相互作用和细胞信号传递等领域的发现。该设备还将成为开发医疗设备和稀有细胞群分析的宝贵工具，如循环肿瘤细胞(CTCs)、癌症干细胞和个性化药物的分析。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Single cell biology has offered a new path to obtain biological insight that has been masked by the ensemble average from a large cell population. Studying biology at the single-cell level will not only enhance our understanding of the complicated biological mechanisms but also help produce new therapy and drugs to cure human diseases. To support single cell analysis, new tools of extraordinary precision, flexibility, and capability have to be developed. Although microfluidic device has been demonstrated as a highly promising platform for investigating single cells, one serious limit of today's microfluidic single-cell device is that cells in microfluidic environment is very different from cells in standad culture environment and even more different from cells in physiological environment. We propose to develop a universal microfluidic single-cell dispensing and conditioning device to addresses this important limitation. The device has an innovative architecture that integrates different functions, including single cell detection, capturing, conditioning, and release, on a microfluidic platform. The proposed device will operate in a close-loop fashion, requiring no user intervention once the user application is specified, due to the field-programmable-gate-array (FPGA) control and coordination of all the functions together. Besides these unique features, the proposed device can be manufactured at very low cost, fully automated, compatible with industrial standards, and expanded into array format for ultrahigh throughput. The proposed device is intended to become a tool that will be widely used on a daily base by researchers performing fundamental and clinical research benefiting from single cell studies. Since single-cell biology prevails in many areas of biology and medicine, the proposed device is anticipated to satisfy a major need in biomedicine with increasing demands in the future. If developed successfully, the device will facilitate and accelerate discoveries in cancer and stem cell research, new cell therapy, drug screening and testing, infectious and genetic diseases, cell-cell interactions, and cell signaling. The device will also become an invaluable tool for the development of medical devices and assays dealing with rare cell populations such as assays for circulating tumor cells (CTCs), cancer stem cells and personalized medicine.