School of Microelectronics, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an, 710072, PR China; Research & Development Institute of Northwestern Polytechnical University in Shenzhen, 518000, PR China; Yangtze River Delta Research Institute of NPU, Taicang, 215400, PR China.
School of Microelectronics, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi'an, 710072, PR China.
Anal Chim Acta. 2023 Oct 16;1278:341701. doi: 10.1016/j.aca.2023.341701. Epub 2023 Aug 10.
Cell characterization and manipulation play an important role in biological and medical applications. Cell viability evaluation is of significant importance for cell toxicology assay, dose test of anticancer drugs, and other biochemical stimulations. The electrical properties of cells change when cells transform from healthy to a pathological state. Current methods for evaluating cell viability usually requires a complicated chip and the throughput is limited.
In this paper, a bipolar electrode (BPE) array based microfluidic device for assessing cell viability is exploited using AC electrodynamics. The viability of various cells including yeast cells and K562 cells, can be evaluated by analyzing the electro-rotation (ROT) speed and direction of cells, as well as the dielectrophoresis (DEP) responses of cells. Firstly, the cell viability can be identified by the position of the cell captured on the BPE electrode in terms of DEP force. Besides, cell viability can also be evaluated based on both the cell rotation speed and direction using ROT. Under the action of travelling wave dielectric electrophoresis force, the cell viability can also be distinguished by the rotational motion of cells on bipolar electrode edges.
This study demonstrates the utility of BPEs to enable scalable and high-throughput AC electrodynamics platforms by imparting a flexibility in chip design that is unparalleled by using traditional electrodes. By using BPEs, our proposed new technique owns wide application for cell characterization and viability assessment in situ detection and analysis.
细胞表征和操作在生物和医学应用中起着重要作用。细胞活力评估对于细胞毒性测定、抗癌药物剂量测试和其他生化刺激非常重要。当细胞从健康状态转变为病理状态时，其电特性会发生变化。目前评估细胞活力的方法通常需要复杂的芯片，并且通量有限。
本文利用交流电动动力学，开发了一种基于双极电极（BPE）阵列的微流控装置，用于评估细胞活力。通过分析细胞的电旋转（ROT）速度和方向以及细胞的介电泳（DEP）响应，可以评估各种细胞的活力，包括酵母细胞和 K562 细胞。首先，可以根据 DEP 力将细胞在 BPE 电极上捕获的位置来识别细胞活力。此外，还可以基于 ROT 来评估细胞的旋转速度和方向来评估细胞活力。在行波介电泳力的作用下，还可以通过细胞在双极电极边缘的旋转运动来区分细胞活力。
本研究证明了 BPE 能够通过赋予传统电极无与伦比的芯片设计灵活性来实现可扩展和高通量的交流电动动力学平台。通过使用 BPE，我们提出的新技术在细胞表征和活力评估方面具有广泛的应用，可用于原位检测和分析。
