Microfluidic device lets the drop beat
13 Oct 2015
A Lab on a Chip article highlighted in Chemistry World by Christopher Barnard
Scientists in Switzerland have incorporated pulsing human heart tissue into a microfluidic device to make a miniscule model of a living system that could be used to test new drugs.
The hanging drops are connected through 200μm-wide channels
‘This is one of the most interesting recent developments in the field of microfluidic systems,’ comments Wouter van der Wijngaart, who heads up the research into micro- and nanofluidic systems at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. ‘This type of system has the potential to become the de facto workhorse in the field of 3D microtissue culturing.’
Please visit Chemistry World to read the full article.
Adding the ‘heart’ to hanging drop networks for microphysiological multi-tissue experiments*
Saeed Rismani Yazdi, Amir Shadmani, Sebastian C. Bürgel, Patrick M. Misun, Andreas Hierlemann and Olivier Frey
Lab Chip, 2015, Advance Article
DOI: 10.1039/C5LC01000D
*Access is free through a registered RSC account until 19 November 2015 – click here to register
“Pioneers of Miniaturization” Lectureship 2015
12 Oct 2015
Dino Di Carlo is the winner of the “Pioneers of Miniaturization” Lectureship 2015
Lab on a Chip and Corning Incorporated are delighted to announce that Professor Dino Di Carlo is the winner of the 2015 “Pioneers of Miniaturization” Lectureship.
The 10th “Pioneers of Miniaturization” Lectureship, sponsored by Lab on a Chip and Corning Incorporated and supported by the Chemical and Biological Microsystems Society (CBMS), is for early to mid-career scientists who have made extraordinary or outstanding contributions to the understanding or development of miniaturised systems.
This “Pioneers of Miniaturization” Lectureship will be presented to Professor Di Carlo at the µTAS 2015 Conference in Gyeongju, Korea, 25-29 October 2015. Professor Di Carlo will receive a certificate, a monetary award and will give a short lecture.
About the winner
Professor Di Carlo received his B.S. in Bioengineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 2002 and received a Ph.D. in Bioengineering from the University of California, Berkeley and San Francisco in 2006.
Professor Di Carlo is currently a Professor in the Department of Bioengineering at the University of California, Los Angeles, USA. Professor Di Carlo’s current research aims to exploit unique physics, microenvironment control and the potential for automation associated with miniaturized systems for applications in basic biology, medical diagnostics, material fabrication and cellular engineering.
Among other honours and awards, Professor Di Carlo has been awarded the National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development award and the U.S. Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigator Award in 2012, the Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Young Faculty Award in 2011, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director’s New Innovator Award and Coulter Translational Research Award in 2010.
For more details on Professor Di Carlo’s research please visit his lab homepage.
Many congratulations to Prof. Di Carlo on this achievement from the Lab on a Chip team
2015 MicroTAS Video Competition
12 Oct 2015
Get your entries in before the deadline on 26th October 2015!
Lab on a Chip is proud to announce the second μTAS Video Competition, created in partnership with Dolomite Microfluidics and supported by the CBMS (the Chemical and Biological Microsystems Society).
We invite registered μTAS participants to submit short videos (see full conditions of entry below) that are either scientifically or educationally focused. Videos may be fun, artistic or just surprising and unusual in order to meet these criteria.
Dolomite Microfluidics, innovators in microfluidic solutions, are supporting this competition with $2500 worth of Dolomite equipment as the prize.
If you think you have the necessary visual science to take home the prize, have a read of the entry conditions below!
Deadline: 26th October 2015
Video Award Submission Process – Easy 3 Step Process
Step 1. Sign-In to the Electronic Form Using Your Registration Number
Please have your Registration Number accessible. If you are unable to locate your Registration Number, please contact microtas2015@hdasan.com.
Step 2. Fill in Remaining Information on Electronic Submission Form
Please fill in remaining information on the electronic submission form including title of image and your caption.
Step 3. Upload Your Video
All entries are to be submitted online via this website as .mpg, .mp4, .mov, .avi or .wmv. Entries will not be accepted by email or post. Once your entry has been successfully uploaded and submitted, you will be given an entry number and you will be sent a confirmation email with the information you provided, minus the video. The ability to submit an video will close Monday,26 October 2015 at 23:59 Honolulu, Hawaii, USA time (HST. GMT minus 10 hours).
Guidelines:
1. Only participants registered for the MicroTAS conference can take part and submit videos
2. Videos must be either scientific (demonstrating interesting aspects) or educational (enhancing understanding) with respect to micro- or nanofluidics
3. Videos can be presented in a fun way
4. Videos can be presented in an artistic way
5. Videos can be presented in a surprising or unusual way
6. Videos can be enhanced by audio, animations, or annotations, if necessary
7. Videos should be no longer than 2 minutes each
8. Videos should have a file size less than 25 Mbytes (please use appropriate video compression)
9. Videos must be viewable on a PC without special software (.mpg, .mp4, .mov, .avi or .wmv)
10. Videos can be uploaded between July 25 and October 26, 2015
11. All submissions are submitted on the basis that they may be used by LOC and/or CBMS for promotional purposes in any form
12. Assessment by an international panel of judges will take place at MicroTAS 2015. The judges’ decision will be final, and no discussion will be entertained.
13. The prize will be awarded at MicroTAS 2015, and a written voucher for the equipment will be handed over to the person submitting the winning entry.
Finally, just for a bit of inspiration, here’s a classic Lab on a Chip video from our YouTube channel…enjoy!
New YouTube Videos!
01 Oct 2015
New method for studying microalgal growth
29 Sep 2015
an article by Claire Weston, PhD student at Imperial College London
The device
The study and optimisation of microalgal growth is a hot topic at the moment due to the use of microalgae in many industrial processes, as well as its potential use as biofuel. Previously, I have written about a Lab on a Chip article from the Sinton lab on optimising microalgal growth by varying irradiance conditions.
Now Mingming Wu’s group, from Cornell University, have published an article focused on the effect of nitrogen concentration on cell growth rates. Wu has developed a platform based on agarose gel, as shown in the diagram. The nutrient media can flow through this gel while the cells can’t, maintaining separate microhabitats.
The authors decided to study the effect of nitrogen concentration gradients on the microalgae (C. reinhardtii), using ammonium as the nitrogen source. Nitrogen is essential for microalgae, as it is required for protein and nucleic acid synthesis, and ammonium is the preferred source for this particular strain.
An ammonium gradient was obtained by flowing ammonium-containing media through the source channel, and ammonium-free media through the sink channel (diagram C). As expected, increasing the concentration (within the micromolar range) increased the microalgal growth rates. Fluorescence imaging allowed the authors to quantify the growth kinetics using the Monod equation (similar to the Michaelis-Menten equation for enzyme kinetics). This is the first time this has been achieved for this particular microalgal strain with nitrogen concentration as the variable.
Another interesting find was that when the microalgae were subjected to millimolar ammonium concentrations, growth inhibition was seen. The standard medium for microalgae contains 7.5 mM ammonium, so these results suggest that these concentrations need to be reduced by several orders of magnitude in order to maximise growth rates!
Wu and co-workers have nicely demonstrated the capablilty of their agarose-based platform in quantifying growth kinetics and they highlight that it is 50-fold faster, and more cost effective, than the standard chemostat system. They also observed cell heterogeneity during their experiments and plan to use their system to study this further, along with other aspects of cellular behaviour such as quorum sensing.
To download the full article for free* click the link below:
An array microhabitat system for high throughput studies of microalgal growth under controlled nutrient gradients
Beum Jun Kim, Lubna V. Richter, Nicholas Hatter, Chih-kuan Tung, Beth A. Ahner and Mingming Wu
Lab Chip, 2015,15, 3687-3694
DOI: 10.1039/ C5LC00727E
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About the webwriter
Claire Weston is a PhD student in the Fuchter Group, at Imperial College London. Her work is focused on developing novel photoswitches and photoswitchable inhibitors.
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*Access is free until 19/10/2015 through a registered RSC account – click here to register
Winner of the Productizing Science© competition 2015
28 Sep 2015
Congratulations to Zimmertech AS, winner of the Dolomite Microfluidics and Lab on a Chip Productizing Science© competition 2015
The Productizing Science© Competition provides entrants with the opportunity to take advantage of Dolomite’s experience in developing successful scientific products. Entrants were asked to submit an abstract detailing their innovative scientific concept, and an outline of how the concept could be commercially successful.
Out of all the high quality entries received, Zimmertech excelled with their electrochemical sensor development kit. This innovative concept shows real potential for benefiting the microfluidics market and will aid the development of portable hand-held diagnostic devices for disease detection, allowing laboratory-based assays to be performed in the field.
“We are delighted to announce Zimmertech’s Electrochemical sensor development kit as the winner of the Dolomite and Lab on a Chip‘s Productizing Science® Competition 2015. Zimmertech’s technology will be combined with Dolomite’s outstanding R&D capabilities to develop an easy to use product for rapid investigation of electrochemical sensor concepts and assays. We look forward to commercialising the product in 2016 and thus truly Productizing Science®.”
Mike Hawes, Chief Commercial Officer, Dolomite Microfluidics
Congratulations to Zimmertech AS and thank you to everyone who took part in the competition!
New YouTube Videos
17 Sep 2015
Top 10 most accessed Lab on a Chip articles in June 2015
16 Sep 2015
In June 2015, our most downloaded Lab on a Chip articles were:
Shia-Yen Teh, Robert Lin, Lung-Hsin Hung and Abraham P. Lee
DOI: 10.1039/B715524G
Ali Kemal Yetisen, Muhammad Safwan Akram and Christopher R. Lowe
DOI: 10.1039/C3LC50169H
Russell H. Cole, Niek de Lange, Zev J. Gartner and Adam R. Abate
DOI: 10.1039/C5LC00333D
Ching-Hui Lin, Yi-Hsing Hsiao, Hao-Chen Chang, Chuan-Feng Yeh, Cheng-Kun He, Eric M. Salm, Chihchen Chen, Ing-Ming Chiu and Chia-Hsien Hsu
DOI: 10.1039/C5LC00541H
Friedrich Schuler, Frank Schwemmer, Martin Trotter, Simon Wadle, Roland Zengerle, Felix von Stetten and Nils Paust
DOI: 10.1039/C5LC00291E
Mei He, Jennifer Crow, Marc Roth, Yong Zeng and Andrew K. Godwin
DOI: 10.1039/C4LC00662C
Joost F. Swennenhuis, Arjan G. J. Tibbe, Michiel Stevens, Madhumohan R. Katika, Joost van Dalum, Hien Duy Tong, Cees J. M. van Rijn and Leon W. M. M. Terstappen
DOI: 10.1039/C5LC00304K
A. Liga, A. D. B. Vliegenthart, W. Oosthuyzen, J. W. Dear and M. Kersaudy-Kerhoas
DOI: 10.1039/C5LC00240K
A. Wasay and D. Sameoto
DOI: 10.1039/C5LC00342C
Ivo Leibacher, Peter Reichert and Jürg Dual
DOI: 10.1039/C5LC00083A
Interesting read? Let us know your thoughts below.
And remember, you can submit directly to Lab on a Chip!