Lab on a Chip Blog

Lab on a Chip and Dolomite are delighted to announce the winner of the 2022 Pioneers of Miniaturization Lectureship, Professor Yi-Chin Toh.

This Lectureship honours and supports the up and coming, next generation of scientists who have significantly contributed to the understanding or development of miniaturised systems.

Her major scientific contribution is in the interfacing of tissue engineering with microfluidic technology to mimic biological complexity but in scalable and manufacturing-compatible formats that will be practical for deployment in routine drug testing. Her work has contributed significantly to understanding human pluripotent stem cell development and mimicking systemic multi-organ interactions, such as metabolic and immune interactions.

She has produced 64 peer-reviewed publications (h-index = 27), 8 patent applications, and over 100 conference presentations. Her works on animal alternative technologies have won accolades, such as the Global 3R Award, and are being featured in the Lab on the Chip Emerging Investigator Series (2019). Yi-Chin serves in the Australian Research Council College of Experts and is an associate editor of AIP Biomicrofluidics and Frontier in Digital Health (Personalised Medicine). She recently joined the Scientific Advisory Committee of Lab on a Chip (2022). She also contributes actively to the organization of the MicroTAS conference series, including the Poster Award Committee (2018-2019) and the Executive Technical Program Committee (ETPC) in 2021.

Read some of Yi-Chin Toh’s recent Lab on a Chip papers:

Lab on a Chip – Integration of a microfluidic multicellular coculture array with machine learning analysis to predict adverse cutaneous drug reactions

Lab on a Chip – Self-aligning Tetris-Like (TILE) modular microfluidic platform for mimicking multi-organ interactions

Lab on a Chip – A liver-immune coculture array for predicting systemic drug-induced skin sensitization

Where life begins, the matter is structured at the micron scale by slotting every single molecule into its needful space. The molecules looped a bilipid membrane and nested more functional molecules inside, controlling the flows of energy in that smallest living cell. Every loop is a thicket of surprises on how much life can accomplish. High-precision measurements are a way to go to explore these small loops with immense information.   

A cell requires the bilipid membrane to keep its functional molecules inside and separate itself from the surrounding environment. Bilipid membrane is a thin and flexible film made of water repellent and attractant molecules that form double layers in watery solutions where the water attractant heads line up outside and water repellent tails stay inside. Conditions on the two sides of a bilipid membrane (so, inside and outside of a cell) are often different because the presence and concentrations of surrounding ions and molecules will be different. Although the law of thermodynamics tries to equilibrate the conditions, ion pumps and proteins embedded in bilipid membranes pump molecules and ions in and out, in order to get the cell what it needs. We need a precise understanding of the nature of bilipid membranes to understand life, survival, and producing e.g., pharmaceuticals for survival or better living. Currently, multiple methodologies allow looking at a single cell or single chemical process step level. However, not that many allow analyzing the same phenomena with the same precision from different perspectives. 

Voltage-dependent ion channels are a prominent example of the interest in an efficient methodology for multiple measurements. In essence, they allow for recording the electrical signals that surge as a response to activation of voltage-dependent channels, combined with simultaneous optical observation of structural changes and membrane dynamics. It is not a novel idea in the research world; however, reaching this goal has been challenging. Multiple methodologies have been proposed and tested, but frequently at a cost of a loss of precision or a rise in system complexity, making it hard to handle and more prone to error. The work published by Tobias Ensslen and Jan C. Behrends proposes a gracious solution that with a simple in-concept modification can achieve high optical resolution fluorescence microscopy while using a modified routinely used multielectrode-cavity array (MECA) (Figure 1). 

While taking the original MECA design, a platform used for electrophysiological recordings for artificially formed lipid bilayers, a few alterations were implemented in order to accommodate the fluorescence imaging. The original device was designed with several novelties: (1) Silver/silver chloride electrodes and a gold conductive layer were used for detecting electrical signals emitted by an activated membrane. (2) The substrate for the fabricated system is coverslip glass instead of a microscope slide glass, which decreases the photons’ optical path from 500 µm to <170 µm. (3) The bottom electrodes were changed from a circular shape to a ring one, leaving a central opening for the light path. (4) The MECA-opto platform is also equipped with four apertures for membrane formation, which allow quickly switching the recording if a membrane is damaged or photobleaching in the recording site occurs. Altogether, these modifications enabled the acquisition of individually addressable electrophysiological and optical data without any additional equipment. 

As a proof of concept study, the group demonstrated the molecular process of opening the voltage-dependant ion channel on the given membrane when activated by an antibacterial peptide, ceratotoxin-A. MECA-opto recordings allowed to determine the lifetimes of fluorophores with the results consistent with the available data regarding the stability of fluorophores. This is a promising work that can advance many studies at the molecular level and our understanding of the mechanisms of opening and closing ion channels. 

Figure 1. The MECA-Opto device can combine both electrophysiological and optical recordings to monitor free-standing membranes and membrane proteins.

To download the full article for free* click the link below:

A chip-based array for high-resolution fluorescence characterization of free-standing horizontal lipid membranes under voltage clamp

Tobias Ensslen and Jan C. Behrends

Lab Chip, 2022, DOI: 10.1039/d2lc00357k

About the Web writers

Oksana Savchak is a Ph.D. student in Biosensors and Devices Lab at the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. She focuses on the development of microfluidic screening platforms to investigate cell-material interactions.

Burcu Gumuscu is an assistant professor at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, and the chair of the Biosensors and Devices Lab. She strives for the development, fabrication, and application of smart biomaterials to realize high-precision processing in high-throughput microfluidic settings. She specifically focuses on the design and development of lab-on-a-chip devices containing hydrogels for diversified life sciences applications.

Lab on a Chip is very pleased to be sponsoring and attending Acoustofluidics 2022, taking place 19-21 October 2022 in Glasgow, Scotland.

This focused meeting is dedicated to exploring the science, engineering, and use of micro- to nanoscale Acoustofluidics.

Announced Keynote Speakers
David Weitz (Harvard Univ.)
Bruce Drinkwater (Univ. of Bristol)
Jürg Dual (ETH Zürich)
Eleanor Stride (Univ. of Oxford)

In particular, the scope of the conference includes but is not limited to:

1. Devices

• Transducer Fabrication
• Integrated System
• Lab-on-a-Chip
• Thin Film and Flexible Acoustofluidics
• Theory and/or Simulation
• Other

2. Applications

• Environment
• Biology
• Medicine
• Energy
• Theory and/or Simulation
• Other

3. Manipulation, Transport and Control

• Acoustic Manipulation
• Liquid Transport, Jetting and Nebulisation
• Bubble and Cavity Acoustics
• Control Schemes
• Theory and/or Simulation
• Other

4. Physics

• New Phenomena and Mechanisms
• Acoustic Fields and Streaming
• Acoustic Thermal Effects and Energy
• Fluid-Structure Interactions
• Theory and/or Simulation
• Other

Abstract Deadline
Sunday, 31 July 2022

Find out more and register at acoustofluidics.net

We are delighted to welcome Professors Keisuke Goda, Sindy Tang & Yi-Chin Toh to the Lab on a Chip Advisory Board.

Keisuke Goda

Professor, Department of Chemistry

University of Tokyo, Japan

Keisuke Goda is a professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Tokyo, an adjunct professor in the Institute of Technological Sciences at Wuhan University, and an adjunct professor in the Department of Bioengineering at UCLA. He obtained his B.A. from UC Berkeley summa cum laude in 2001 and his Ph.D. from MIT in 2007, both in physics. At MIT, he worked on the development of gravitational-wave detectors in the LIGO group which led to the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics. After several years of work on high-speed imaging and microfluidics at Caltech and UCLA, he joined the University of Tokyo as a professor. His research group focuses on the development of serendipity-enabling technologies based on molecular imaging and spectroscopy together with microfluidics and computational analytics to push the frontier of science. He currently leads Serendipity Lab, a global network of scientists who aim to realize Louis Pasteur’s statement “Chance favours the prepared mind”. He has published >300 papers, filed >30 patents, and received numerous awards and honours such as Japan Academy Medal and JSPS Prize. He is a fellow of RSC and SPIE.

Keisuke was the recipient of the Lab on a Chip & Dolomite Pioneers of Miniaturization Lectureship Award 2021, and is a Thought Leader for our on-going AI in Microfluidics thematic collection.

Find out more on the GODA LAB website and follow @ut_godalab on Twitter

Here are a selection of Keisuke’s Lab on a Chip papers below:

• Deep imaging flow cytometry
• Are droplets really suitable for single-cell analysis? A case study on yeast in droplets
• AI on a chip

Sindy Tang

Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and by courtesy of Radiology (Precision Health and Integrated Diagnostics)

Stanford University, USA

Sindy KY Tang is the Kenneth and Barbara Oshman Faculty Scholar and Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and by courtesy of Radiology (Precision Health and Integrated Diagnostics) at Stanford University. She received her Ph.D. from Harvard University in Engineering Sciences under the supervision of Prof. George Whitesides. Her lab at Stanford works on the fundamental understanding of fluid mechanics and mass transport in micro-nano systems, and the application of this knowledge towards problems in biology, rapid diagnostics for health and environmental sustainability. The current areas of focus include the flow physics of confined micro-droplets using experimental and machine learning methods, interfacial mass transport and self-assembly, and ultrahigh throughput opto-microfluidic systems for disease diagnostics, water and energy sustainability, and single-cell wound healing studies. She was a Stanford Biodesign Faculty Fellow in 2018. Dr. Tang’s work has been recognized by multiple awards including the NSF CAREER Award, 3M Nontenured Faculty Award, the ACS Petroleum Fund New Investigator Award, and invited lecture at the Nobel Symposium on Microfluidics in Sweden.

Sindy has been a committed member of the Lab on a Chip 2022 Commissioning Panel

Find out more on the Tang Lab website and follow @TangSindy on Twitter

Here are a selection of Sindy’s Lab on a Chip papers below:

• Exponential magnetophoretic gradient for the direct isolation of basophils from whole blood in a microfluidic system
• Confinement and viscosity ratio effect on droplet break-up in a concentrated emulsion flowing through a narrow constriction
• Optofluidic ultrahigh-throughput detection of fluorescent drops

Yi-Chin Toh

Associate Professor, School of Mechanical, Medical and Process Engineering,  

Queensland University of Technology, Australia

Yi-Chin Toh is a Future Fellow and Associate Professor at the Queensland University of Technology. She obtained her B.Eng in Chemical Engineering and Ph.D in Bioengineering from the National University of Singapore in 2001 and 2008 respectively. She did her post-doctoral training at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2008 under Professor Joel Voldman’s guidance. Before joining QUT, she led an independent research group as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Biomedical Engineering, National University of Singapore.

Her research interest is in engineering multi-scale tissue models to mimic complex biological interactions during human development and diseases, as well as translating them into scalable platforms for disease modeling and drug testing applications. Dr Toh is a recipient of the Australia Research Council Future Fellowship, National University of Singapore Research Scholarship, A*STAR Graduate Scholarship and A*STAR International Fellowship.

Yi-Chin has been a committed member of the Lab on a Chip 2022 Commissioning Panel

Find out more on the MicroTE Lab website and follow @MicroTElab on Twitter

Here are a selection of Yi-Chin’s Lab on a Chip papers below:

• Integration of a microfluidic multicellular coculture array with machine learning analysis to predict adverse cutaneous drug reactions
• Self-aligning Tetris-Like (TILE) modular microfluidic platform for mimicking multi-organ interactions
• A liver-immune coculture array for predicting systemic drug-induced skin sensitization

Please join us in welcoming our new Advisory Board members and we look forward to continuing to work with them on Lab on a Chip!

Lab on a Chip is delighted to be sponsoring the EMBL Microfluidics Conference (11-13 July), bringing together top researchers and emerging research leaders to spark scientific exchange and create community. Topics spanning from fundamental physics & chemistry to device design and nascent biological applications will be presented, which should be of interest to everyone from experts in microfluidic design to users of the next-generation of microfluidic tools, and from academic scholars and trainees to industry colleagues.

Session Topics

• Probing biology
• Next-generation device design and emerging applications
• Disease diagnostics, analytical chemistry and chemical synthesis
• Single-cell and single-molecule analyses

Featured amongst the speaker list is Associate Editor Yoon-Kyoung Cho, & Commissioning Panel member Yi-Chin Toh!

Find out more about the conference:

Date: 11 – 13 Jul 2022

Location: EMBL Heidelberg and Virtual

Deadline(s):

Abstract submission: 19 Apr 2022

Registration (On-site): 9 May 2022

Registration (Virtual): 4 Jul 2022

The hybrid µTAS 2021 meeting was held from 10-14th October, chaired by Amy Herr & Joel Voldman. We’d like to thank all those who entered the awards this year, and to the judging panels who helped us select the winners. All three prizes received excellent submissions and we’re delighted to announce the winners below.

Lab on a Chip/Dolomite Pioneers of Miniaturization Lectureship

Professor Keisuke Goda (University of Tokyo, Japan), has been awarded the 16th Pioneers of Miniaturization Lectureship, sponsored by Dolomite and Lab on a Chip. The Pioneers of Miniaturization Lectureship rewards early to mid-career scientists who have made extraordinary or outstanding contributions to the understanding or development of miniaturised systems.
Like previous years, Professor Goda will receive a monetary award, certificate and plaque, and gave a stunning talk during the µTAS 2021 conference: “a love story of imaging and microfluidics”.

Art in Science Competition
In collaboration with Greg Cooksey from the National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST), we were pleased to present the Art in Science award:

“Living Impression Sunrise” by Yang Du (Fudan University, China)

An fluorescent image of tumor pre-metastatic perivascular niche. 3D microvessels networks formed by self-assembly of Human Umbilical Vein Endothelial Cells interacted with tumor organoids in this microfluidic chip. The title of this image is inspired by Claude Monet’s Impression Sunrise.

Widmer Poster Prize
The Widmer Poster Prize was awarded this year to Sohyung Lee (UCLA, USA), for her poster and video presentation on “Scalable fabrication of 3D structured microparticles using induced phase separation”. Sohyung put a huge amount of time and effort into her presentation, and the judges were very impressed.

Congratulations to all the winners at this year’s hybrid µTAS conference. We look forward to seeing you at µTAS 2022 (Hangzhou, China)!

Read the growing collection here – rsc.li/AIinMicrofluidics

We are delighted to announce a new thematic collection in Lab on a Chip on AI in Microfluidics, with Professors Keisuke Goda, Hang Lu, Peng Fei & Jochen Guck as Thought Leaders.

The last decade has seen unprecedented growth in computational power and cloud storage breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI). AI-produced outcomes have been proven comparable or even superior to the performance of human experts in drug design, material discovery, and medical diagnosis. In these applications, lab on a chip technology, in particular microfluidics, plays an important role as a platform for both the construction and implementation of AI in a large-scale, high-throughput, automated, multiplexed, and cost-effective manner. The goal of this thematic collection is to highlight new advances in this growing field with an emphasis on the interface between technological advancements and impactful applications.

This on-going collection is collated by Thought Leaders Keisuke Goda, Hang Lu, Peng Fei & Jochen Guck, and the Lab on a Chip Editorial Office. Are you interested in submitting? We welcome submissions of original research articles and reviews, which (after peer review) will be published and added to the online collection. Papers in this collection will receive extensive promotion throughout the submission period and also will be disseminated widely as a ‘flagship’ collection for the journal. If you are interested in submitting to the series, please get in touch with the Lab on a Chip Editorial Office at loc-rsc@rsc.org

This collection is open for submissions now

Lab on a Chip and Dolomite are delighted to announce the winner of the 2021 Pioneers of Miniaturization Lectureship, Professor Keisuke Goda.

This Lectureship honours and supports the up and coming, next generation of scientists who have significantly contributed to the understanding or development of miniaturised systems.

Keisuke Goda is a professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Tokyo, an adjunct professor in the Institute of Technological Sciences at Wuhan University, and an adjunct professor in the Department of Bioengineering at UCLA. He obtained his B.A. from UC Berkeley summa cum laude in 2001 and his Ph.D. from MIT in 2007, both in physics. At MIT, he worked on the development of gravitational-wave detectors in the LIGO group which led to the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics. After several years of work on high-speed imaging and microfluidics at Caltech and UCLA, he joined the University of Tokyo as a professor. His research group focuses on the development of serendipity-enabling technologies based on molecular imaging and spectroscopy together with microfluidics and computational analytics to push the frontier of science. He currently leads Serendipity Lab, a global network of scientists who aim to realize Louis Pasteur’s statement “Chance favours the prepared mind”. He has published >300 papers, filed >30 patents, and received numerous awards and honours such as Japan Academy Medal and JSPS Prize. He is a fellow of RSC and SPIE.

Our Pioneers of Miniaturization Lectureship Winner is invited to speak at MicroTAS, and thus Keisuke will be presenting his talk at the MicroTAS 2021 meeting, 10-14^th October 2021.

We give our warmest congratulations to Keisuke on his achievement!

Read some of Keisuke Goda’s recent Lab on a Chip papers* below:

Are droplets really suitable for single-cell analysis? A case study on yeast in droplets

Y. Nakagawa, S. Ohnuki, N. Kondo, K. Itto, F. Ghanegolmohammadi, A. Isozaki, Y. Ohya, and K. Goda, “Are droplets really suitable for single-cell analysis? A case study on yeast in droplets”, Lab on a Chip, 19, 3793, (2021)

AI on a chip

A. Isozaki, J. Harmon, Y. Zhou, S. Li, Y. Nakagawa, M. Hayashi, H. Mikami, C. Lei, and K. Goda, “AI on a chip”, Lab on a Chip, 17, 3074 (2020)

Intelligent image-activated cell sorting 2.0

A. Isozaki, H. Mikami, H. Tezuka, H. Matsumura, K. Huang, M. Akamine, K. Hiramatsu, T. Iino, T. Ito, H. Karakawa, Y. Kasai, Y. Li, Y. Nakagawa, S. Ohnuki, T. Ota, Y. Qian, S. Sakuma, T. Sekiya, Y. Shirasaki, N. Suzuki, E. Tayyabi, T. Wakamiya, M. Xu, M. Yamagishi, H. Yan, Q. Yu, S. Yan, D. Yuan, W. Zhang, Y. Zhao, F. Arai, R. E. Campbell, C. Danelon, D. Di Carlo, K. Hiraki, Y. Hoshino, Y. Hosokawa, M. Inaba, A. Nakagawa, Y. Ohya, M. Oikawa, S. Uemura, Y. Ozeki, T. Sugimura, N. Nitta, and K. Goda, “Intelligent image-activated cell sorting 2.0”, Lab on a Chip, 13, 2263 (2020)

*Free to read until 31st October 2021 with an RSC publishing account.