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

描述（由申请人提供）：单细胞生物学提供了一种新的途径来获得生物学洞察力，该洞察力已被来自大细胞群的整体平均值所掩盖。在单细胞水平上研究生物学，不仅可以加深我们对复杂生物学机制的理解，而且有助于产生治疗人类疾病的新疗法和药物。为了支持单细胞分析，具有非凡精度，灵活性， 能力必须得到发展。尽管微流控装置已被证明是研究单细胞的非常有前途的平台，但当今微流控装置的一个严重限制是， 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体单细胞分配和调节装置来解决这个重要的限制。该设备具有创新的架构，在微流体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。由于现场可编程门阵列（FPGA）控制和所有功能的协调，所提出的设备将以闭环方式运行，一旦指定用户应用，则不需要用户干预。除了这些独特的功能，所提出的设备可以以非常低的成本，完全自动化，与工业标准兼容，并扩展到阵列格式的可编程吞吐量。该申报器械旨在成为一种工具，将被研究人员广泛使用，每天进行基础和临床研究，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，因此预计所提出的设备将满足未来日益增长的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，细胞间相互作用和细胞信号传导的发现。该设备还将成为开发医疗设备和处理稀有细胞群的分析的宝贵工具，例如循环肿瘤细胞（CTC），癌症干细胞和个性化医疗的分析。

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.