Screening the Cellular Microenvironment: A Role for Microfluidics

Microarraying the cellular microenvironment

The in vivo stem cell microenvironment or niche is composed of an intricate blend of extracellular matrix proteins, soluble protein factors, immobilized protein factors, proteoglycans, small molecule signals, in some cases mineralized tissue, and numerous adjacent cell types, all of which likely vary in space and time. In concert, these many components present the cells with an ‘array’ of bioch...

Patterning the cellular microenvironment.

Acousto-microfluidics for screening of ssDNA aptamer

We demonstrate a new screening method for obtaining a prostate-specific antigen (PSA) binding aptamer based on an acoustofluidic separation (acoustophoreis) technique. Since acoustophoresis provides simultaneous washing and separation in a continuous flow mode, we efficiently obtained a PSA binding aptamer that shows high affinity without any additional washing step, which is necessary in other...

The cellular microenvironment and cell adhesion: a role for O-glycosylation.

Glycosylation is one of the most abundant protein modifications in Nature, having roles in protein stability, secretion and function. Alterations in mucin-type O-glycosylation are responsible for a number of human diseases and developmental defects, as well as associated with certain types of cancer. However, the mechanistic role of this form of glycosylation in many of these instances is uncle...

Microfluidics for cell-based high throughput screening platforms - A review.

In the last decades, the basic techniques of microfluidics for the study of cells such as cell culture, cell separation, and cell lysis, have been well developed. Based on cell handling techniques, microfluidics has been widely applied in the field of PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction), immunoassays, organ-on-chip, stem cell research, and analysis and identification of circulating tumor cells. As ...