Thomas Lord Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, Duke University, Durham, NC, 27708, USA.
Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Faculty, School of Pharmacy, Northeastern University, Palo Alto, CA, 94301, USA.
Small. 2021 Nov;17(46):e2103848. doi: 10.1002/smll.202103848. Epub 2021 Oct 17.
Droplet microfluidics has revolutionized the biomedical and drug development fields by allowing for independent microenvironments to conduct drug screening at the single cell level. However, current microfluidic sorting devices suffer from drawbacks such as high voltage requirements (e.g., >200 Vpp), low biocompatibility, and/or low throughput. In this article, a single-phase focused transducer (SPFT)-based acoustofluidic chip is introduced, which outperforms many microfluidic droplet sorting devices through high energy transmission efficiency, high accuracy, and high biocompatibility. The SPFT-based sorter can be driven with an input power lower than 20 Vpp and maintain a postsorting cell viability of 93.5%. The SPFT sorter can achieve a throughput over 1000 events per second and a sorting purity up to 99.2%. The SPFT sorter is utilized here for the screening of doxorubicin cytotoxicity on cancer and noncancer cells, proving its drug screening capability. Overall, the SPFT droplet sorting device shows great potential for fast, precise, and biocompatible drug screening.
液滴微流控技术通过在单细胞水平上进行药物筛选，为生物医药和药物开发领域带来了革命性的变化。然而，目前的微流控分选设备存在一些缺点，如需要高电压（例如，>200 Vpp）、生物相容性差和/或低通量。本文介绍了一种基于单相聚焦换能器（SPFT）的声流控芯片，该芯片通过高效率的能量传输、高精度和高生物相容性，优于许多微流控液滴分选设备。基于 SPFT 的分选器可以用低于 20 Vpp 的输入功率驱动，保持 93.5%的细胞存活率。SPFT 分选器的通量超过 1000 个事件/秒，分选纯度高达 99.2%。本文利用 SPFT 分选器对癌症和非癌细胞的阿霉素细胞毒性进行了筛选，证明了其药物筛选能力。总的来说，SPFT 液滴分选装置在快速、精确和生物相容的药物筛选方面具有巨大的潜力。
