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

这个小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第一阶段项目支持旨在开发将材料输送到活细胞中的新技术的研究。将材料送入活细胞是许多生物应用和创新治疗方法的限制步骤，包括基于干细胞的治疗和再生医学。在这个项目中，探索了一种允许任何类型的分子高通量地输送到任何类型的细胞中的新技术。在这个创新的系统中，活细胞通过在微流控通道中流动来排列，待输送的材料通过携带感兴趣分子的微型流体喷射到细胞上。这项研究有望在干细胞研究和基于干细胞的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通过消除目前使诱导多能干细胞产生效率极低的细胞内递送问题，促进诱导多能干细胞(IPS)的产生，而诱导多能干细胞是再生医学领域的后起之秀。除了帮助生物医学界实现iPS的商业潜力外，新的细胞内给药技术的可获得性可以使从分子生物学到药物研究的许多不同生物学领域受益，并使一些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.