Lab on a Chip Blog

Emerging Investigator Series – Katherine Elvira

02 Jun 2020

Lab on a Chip is delighted to introduce our most recent Emerging Investigator, Katherine Elvira!

Katherine received her undergraduate Master’s degree in Chemistry from Imperial College London in 2007. She started working in the field of microfluidics during her PhD (2012, Imperial College London), by building digital microfluidic platforms to perform automated chemical reactions. Katherine then moved to ETH Zürich (Switzerland) working firstly as a Postdoctoral Researcher and then as a Senior Scientist in the Institute for Chemical and Bioengineering. Since 2017, Katherine is the Canada Research Chair in New Materials and Techniques for Health Applications and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Victoria, Canada. Katherine’s group currently develops microfluidic technologies to build bespoke artificial cells for the quantification of pharmacokinetic parameters in vitro. Katherine has recently presented this work at the Gordon Research Conference on Drug Metabolism (2019), is Co-Chair for the Gordon Research Conference on the Physics and Chemistry of Microfluidics (2023) and is a Scientific Mentor for the Creative Destruction Lab.

Read Dr Elvira’s Emerging Investigator paper* “A bespoke microfluidic pharmacokinetic compartment model for drug absorption using artificial cell membranes” and find out more about her and her research in the interview below.

Katherine Elvira

Image credit: UVic Photo Services

Your recent Emerging Investigator Series paper focuses on a new type of pharmacokinetic compartment model for the prediction of drug absorption. How has your research evolved from your first article to this most recent article?

Funnily enough, my first ever article was a very early precursor to this work. We built a microfluidic platform for the formation of droplet interface bilayers (DIBs) in high-throughput. I didn’t work with DIBs again until I started as a Canada Research Chair at the University of Victoria, but they are the basis for the new type of pharmacokinetic compartment model that we show in the Emerging Investigator article. We can now make them mimic human cell membranes and hence they form the building blocks for the compartments in the pharmacokinetic compartment model. In between, my research involved making microfluidic devices for application in many different fields, such as drug discovery, organic chemistry and food science. I also spent some time investigating why microfluidic droplets rarely behave perfectly, and how we can mitigate this. I like that paper because we included a poster in the ESI which my group still uses in the lab to determine what is going wrong with their chips.

What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment?

I am really excited about some cool new artificial cell and tissue models that we are building, and how they can be used to model disease and drug behaviour in humans. My group is full of outstanding researchers, which makes it really easy to be excited about the work they are doing!

In your opinion, what is the biggest advantage of using your microfluidic platform over other methods?

It’s two things, really. Firstly, the fact that we are able to build networks of different compartments and artificial cell membranes on a chip. This allows us to build an in vitro model of the pathway that a drug would take in a human, from the intestine to the blood. And secondly, the fact that we can make these artificial cell membranes using phospholipids that are found in human cells. This makes our in vitro model quite biomimetic. In fact, we are able to predict molecular transport into cells three times better than the state-of-the-art in vitro commercial technique.

What do you find most challenging about your research?

Let’s face it, PDMS is awesome in some ways, but awful in others. I would love to find another material that has the advantages of PDMS, such as being cheap, transparent, and good for prototyping, but that has really stable and modifiable surface chemistry, and that we can mass produce for commercial applications.

In which upcoming conferences or events may our readers meet you?

I am part of the Technical Program Committee for MicroTAS 2020, so I will be at the online conference in October. And next year I am co-Vice Chair of the Gordon Research Conference on the Physics and Chemistry of Microfluidics, which will hopefully be taking place in Italy.

How do you spend your spare time?

I am really lucky to live in beautiful British Columbia on the West coast of Canada. During the winter months I get to go backcountry snowboarding in some of the most outstanding mountains in the world. In the summer, I switch my snowboard for a stand-up paddle board along the beaches in Victoria. I also love travelling, which I do a lot, both for work and for fun. I need my yoga classes to keep me relaxed, and have a slight obsession with cooking all the European foods that I miss from home.

Which profession would you choose if you were not a scientist?

I wanted to be an astronaut when I was younger. It still sounds cool but I am also happy staying on earth and being an academic, it’s a pretty great life.

Can you share one piece of career-related advice or wisdom with other early career scientists?

I don’t always find it easy being a woman in science, so I would encourage early career female scientists to persevere, we need diversity in academia. I would tell their male colleagues to be good allies.

*Dr Elvira’s paper is free to access with an RSC account for the next month.

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Alcohol testing on skin

17 Apr 2020

By Burcu Gumuscu.

Our skin perspires every day by about 2.5 million sweat glands under the dermis layer. Not all the sweat glands have the same function. While some glands release sweat through the opening of hair follicles−aka apocrine glands−, some others open directly onto the skin surface−aka eccrine glands−. The most prevalent type in the body is the eccrine glands, which produce interesting signaling subtleties for monitoring health. Actually, the sweat produced at different times contains the time-stamps of noteworthy information such as electrolytes, metabolites, micronutrients, hormones exogenous agents, each of which can change in concentration in the content of sweat with diet, stress level, hydration status, and physiologic or metabolic state. Monitoring these cues using appropriate sensors makes possible to track an individual’s health in real-time. Sweat analysis potentially complements or even obviates the need for approaches relying on puncturing the skin with needles.

We encounter two major types of skin-interfaced measurement units in the literature: (1) equipped with electronics to power measurement units or run electrochemical measurements (2) colorimetric detection relying on no electronic sensors. Each type has different application areas. The colorimetric detection is particularly interesting as it relies on uniquely designed rapid chemical reactions between the sweat and the unit, in many cases with improved repeatability and accuracy. As a recent example of this kind, a research team from Northwestern University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have introduced a skin sensor to detect signaling subtleties emanating from the skin. The promise of this work lies in the ability to control the reaction kinetics and the mixing of different reagents and samples in a user-operated device. This achievement was made possible by introducing a multi-layered microfluidic device platform containing stop valves and a super absorbent polymer to initiate colorimetric reactions for microliter volumes of ammonia and ethanol in microliter volumes of sweat.

The patch absorbs sweat via super absorbent polymer layers located subjacent to individual wells (Figure 1). The super absorbent polymer layer expands upon soaking sweat, activating a microfluidic mechanical pump that releases pre-loaded reaction buffers into the wells. The colorimetric reaction subsequently takes place (Figure 1). This pad was equipped for running ammonia and ethanol (alcohol) assays. But why two metabolites only? The patch is dedicated to monitoring alcohol testing in daily living. As mentioned in the paper, ammonia levels could serve as an index for hepatic encephalopathy diagnosis in subjects who are experiencing alcohol abuse. Hepatic encephalopathy refers to liver failure mostly caused by alcohol uptake. The researchers also tested the patch on volunteers resting in a warm bath after consuming alcoholic beverages to highlight the operational advantages of such patches. The authors note that this work has direct implications for sweat biomarker research, health monitoring in daily life, and simultaneous drug/alcohol testing.

Figure 1. The skin-interfaced measurement patch, its measuring units, and working mechanism.

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

Soft, skin-interfaced microfluidic systems with integrated enzymatic assays for measuring the concentration of ammonia and ethanol in sweat

Sung Bong Kim, Jahyun Koo, Jangryeol Yoon, Aurélie Hourlier-Fargette, Boram Lee,f Shulin Chen, Seongbin Jo, Jungil Choi, Yong Suk Oh, Geumbee Lee, Sang Min Won, Alexander J. Aranyosi, Stephen P. Lee, Jeffrey B. Model, Paul V. Braun, Roozbeh Ghaffari, Chulwhan Park and John A. Rogers, Lab Chip, 2020, Lab on a Chip Hot Articles

DOI: 10.1039/c9lc01045a

About the Webwriter

Burcu Gumuscu is a researcher in Mesoscale Chemical Systems Group at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. Her research interests include the development of microfluidic devices for quantitative analysis of proteins from single-cells, next-generation sequencing, compartmentalized organ-on-chip studies, and desalination of water on the microscale.

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Outstanding Reviewers for Lab on a Chip in 2019

08 Apr 2020

By Keir Hollingsworth.

We would like to highlight the Outstanding Reviewers for Lab on a Chip in 2019, as selected by the editorial team, for their significant contribution to the journal. The reviewers have been chosen based on the number, timeliness and quality of the reports completed over the last 12 months.

We would like to say a big thank you to those individuals listed here as well as to all of the reviewers that have supported the journal. Each Outstanding Reviewer will receive a certificate to give recognition for their significant contribution.

Dr Daniel Citterio, Keio University, ORCID: 0000-0001-7420-045X

Dr David Collins, University of Melbourne, ORCID: 0000-0001-5382-9718

Dr David Eddington, University of Illinois at Chicago, ORCID: 0000-0002-6346-5193

Dr Mathieu Hautefeuille, National Autonomous University of Mexico, ORCID: 0000-0003-3918-0320

Dr Wolfgang Keil, Institute Curie

Dr Séverine Le Gac, University of Twente, ORCID: 0000-0002-4546-6184

Dr Rebecca Pompano, University of Virginia, ORCID: 0000-0002-8644-9313

Dr Julien Reboud, University of Glasgow, ORCID: 0000-0002-6879-8405

Dr Yi-Chin Toh, Queensland University of Technology, ORCID: 0000-0002-4105-4852

Dr Victor Ugaz, Texas A&M University, ORCID: 0000-0001-9361-9950

Dr Jeremiah Zartman, University of Notre Dame, ORCID: 0000-0001-7195-7203

We would also like to thank the Lab on a Chip board and the Lab on a Chip community for their continued support of the journal, as authors, reviewers and readers.

If you would like to become a reviewer for our journal, just email us with an application form and an up-to-date CV or résumé. You can find more details in our author and reviewer resource centre.

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Emerging Investigator Series – Fabrice Gielen

03 Mar 2020

By Aleksandra Denisin.

Lab on a Chip is delighted to introduce our most recent Emerging Investigator, Fabrice Gielen!

Dr. Fabrice Gielen is an Independent Research Fellow at the Living Systems Institute, University of Exeter. He obtained his PhD from Imperial College London during which he studied cellular membrane dynamics using a combination of single cell microfluidic trapping techniques and single molecule spectroscopy with Profs. Joshua Edel and Andrew deMello. He subsequently moved to Cambridge as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate with Prof. Florian Hollfelder to contribute to the field of ultra-high-throughput biocatalyst evolution. He is a Founder and Scientific Director of Drop-Tech Ltd, which commercializes droplet-on-demand platforms. His research interests include developing novel tools and methods to study and harness single cells with applications in bacteria-phage interactions, protein evolution and regenerative medicine.

Read Dr Gielen’s Emerging Investigator paper* “Deep learning guided image-based droplet sorting for on-demand selection and analysis of single cells and 3D cell cultures” and find out more about him and his research in the interview below.

Your recent Emerging Investigator Series paper focuses on sorting of single droplets for selection and analysis of single cells and 3D cell cultures. How has your research evolved from your first article to this most recent article?

My first article (long ago already!) presented a microfluidic device for trapping and focussing microparticles within microchannels. The common theme with my present work is how precise control at the microscale enables us to perform novel types of biological experiments across populations. We can now truly benefit from the progress made in engineering, computing and optical setups to study biology, not just faster but in fundamentally different ways than was possible when I started my career.

What aspect of your work are you most excited about at the moment?

Studying single cells holds the promise to understand biology down to its fundamental unit. I joined the Living Systems Institute at the University of Exeter to exploit the advantages of droplet microfluidics in terms of single cell control and interrogation for the study of complex biological systems. Since then, I have developed multiple interests ranging from the behaviour of unicellular organisms, cellular differentiation or the discovery of novel antimicrobials. I believe there is also a large scope for other, yet unforeseen applications.

In your opinion, what is the biggest advantage to using your platform for classifying single droplet images compared to other methods?

Images hold a lot of information and machines can uncover patterns where humans cannot. Recent technological progress allows us to combine image acquisition and analysis in real-time. Problems such as image classification used in medical diagnostics or selection to isolate rare cell types benefit enormously from machine learning tools that can identify objects only using human-labelled training data. Our paper shows one way of doing this is by using convolutional neural networks which can be trained to recognize several types of micro-objects simultaneously.

What do you find most challenging about your research?

The ability to combine in a single experiment microfluidic workflows, biological entities, and biochemical reactions has the flipside that successful and conclusive experiments happen only when all these variables coincide (which is sometimes rare!). On the bright side, microfluidics has gone a long way in terms of reproducibility and long-term functionality and the onus is now more on the biology.

At which upcoming conferences or events may our readers meet you?

I am planning to attend the MicroTAS 2020 (Palm Springs) and EMBL microfluidics (Heidelberg).

How do you spend your spare time?

I like to take the family out to visit Devon and the Jurassic Coast, which I highly recommend to anyone visiting the region.

Which profession would you choose if you were not a scientist?

I would go for musician/composer, maybe pianist.

*Dr Gielen’s paper is free to access with an RSC account for the next month.

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Pioneers of Miniaturization Lectureship 2020: Open for Nominations

26 Feb 2020

By Maria Southall.

Lab on a Chip and Dolomite are proud to sponsor the fifteenth Pioneers of Miniaturization Lectureship, to honour and support the up and coming, next generation of scientists who have significantly contributed to the understanding or development of miniaturised systems.

This year’s Lectureship will be presented at the online µTAS 2020 event with the recipient receiving a prize of US$2,000. The µTAS 2020 organisers have made the decision that the meeting will be held as an online event, 4-9^th October 2020, and as a result the deadline for nominations for the Pioneers of Miniaturization Lectureship is 31^st July 2020.

The Lectureship consists of the following elements:

A prize of US$2,000. No other financial contribution will be offered
A certificate recognising the winner of the lectureship
The awardee is required to give a short lecture at the online µTAS 2020 event

Eligibility Criteria

To be eligible for the lectureship, candidates must:

Have completed their PhD
Be actively pursuing an independent research career on miniaturised systems.
Be at an early-mid career stage of their independent career (typically this will be within 15 years of completing their PhD, but appropriate consideration will be given to those who have taken a career break or followed a different study path).

Nomination process

To be considered for the 2020 lectureship, the following must be sent to the Editorial Office

A letter of recommendation with the candidate’s accomplishments and why the lectureship is deserved.
The nominee must be aware that he/she has been nominated for this lectureship.
A complete nomination form (includes list of the candidate’s relevant publications or recent work, candidate’s scientific CV, and full contact details)
Nominations from students and self-nominations are not permissible.

Selection criteria and judging process

Nominations must be made via email to loc-rsc@rsc.org using the Dolomite/Lab on a Chip Pioneers of Miniaturization Lectureship nomination form and a letter of recommendation.
The decision on the winner of the lectureship will be made by a panel of judges comprising a representative from Dolomite and members from the Lab on a Chip Editorial Board, coordinated by the Executive Editor of Lab on a Chip.
The award is for outstanding contributions to the understanding or development of miniaturised systems. This will be judged mainly through their top 1-3 papers and/or an invention documented by patents/or a commercial product. Awards and honorary memberships may also be considered.

Nomination Deadline: 31 July, 2020

Download Nomination form here

Dolomite Microfluidics a leading provider of microfluidics-based solutions for a range of applications including drug encapsulation, droplet manufacture and particle generation. They manufacture complete systems as well as individual modular components to balance ease of use with flexibility.

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Meet our new Advisory Board members!

11 Feb 2020

By Aleksandra Denisin.

Lab on a Chip is excited to introduce the newest additions to our Advisory Board!

Esther Amstad studied material science at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, where she also carried out her PhD thesis under the supervision of Prof. Marcus Textor (2007-2011). Her thesis was devoted to the steric stabilization of iron oxide nanoparticles. As a Postdoctoral fellow, she joined the experimental soft condensed matter group of David A. Weitz at Harvard University, USA (2011-2014). She developed new microfluidic devices to study early stages of the crystallization of nanoparticles, and to produce drops of well-defined sizes at high throughputs. Since June 2014, she is Tenure Track Assistant Professor at the institute of Materials at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, where she heads the Soft Materials Laboratory (SMAL). Inspired by nature, her research team develops drop-based processing routes that offer control over the local composition and structure of materials to fabricate adaptable, self-healing materials.

Esther Amstad

Stephanie Descroix is team leader at Institut Curie, France. Her group is interested in the development of microfluidics for biomedical applications and more recently in organ on chip development for biophysics and biology. She has an initial background in biochemistry and obtained her PhD in Analytical Chemistry in 2002. She was hired a CNRS researcher at ESPCI (Paris) in 2004 to develop microfluidic device for bioanalytical application. In 2011, she joined the lab PhysicoChemistry Curie at Institut Curie to benefit from a unique interdisciplinary and clinical environment. Since 2013, she is head of the CNRS French Micro and Nanofluidic Network (GDR MNF) and she is co-founder of INOREVIA company.

Stephanie Descroix

Mei He is an Assistant Professor at the University of Kansas, USA. She received her PhD degree from the University of Alberta with Professor Jed Harrison, and postdoctoral training from the University of California, Berkeley with Professor Amy Herr. Dr. He Received NIH Maximizing Investigator’s Research Award for Early Stage Investigators (MIRA ESI) and LOC Emerging Investigator in 2019. She also received an Lab on Chip Outstanding Reviewer award for the year of 2018. One of her publications received the 2018 SLAS Technology Readers Choice Award. Her research interests include biomedical microfluidic devices and sensing approaches, 3D biomaterials, and nanodelivery, employed in programming and monitoring biomimetic immunity associated with extracellular vesicles.

Mei He

Michelle Khine is Professor of Biomedical Engineering at University of California, Irvine, USA. Prior to UC Irvine, Khine was an Assistant and Founding professor at UC Merced from 2006-09. At UC Merced, Shrink Nanotechnologies Inc., the first start-up company from youngest UC campus, was spun out of the research developed in Khine’s lab. Her current research projects include: single cell electroporation, shrinky-dink microfluidics, microsystems for stem cell differentiation, canary-on-a-chip and quantitative single-cell analysis of receptor dynamics and chemotactic response on a chip.

Michelle Khine

Wilbur Lam MD, PhD is a physician-scientist-engineer trained in clinical pediatric hematology/oncology as well as bioengineering. He is the W. Paul Bowers Research Chair, Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Biomedical Engineering at Emory University School of Medicine and the Georgia Institute of Technology, and an attending physician at the Aflac Cancer and Blood Disorders Center of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. His laboratory focuses on developing microfluidic and microfabricated systems to study, diagnose, and even treat hematologic diseases including sickle cell disease, thrombotic/bleeding disorders, and leukemia.

Wilbur Lam

Severine Le Gac is Professor at the University of Twente (The Netherlands), where she leads a group called Applied Microfluidics for BioEngineering Research (AMBER). Séverine Le Gac holds her Engineer degree from the ESPCI (Ecole Supérieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles) and her MSc degree from the National Museum of Natural History (both Paris, France). In 2004, she obtained her PhD degree cum laude from the University of Lille (France). After a short visit at the University of Tokushima (Japan), she joined the University of Twente in 2005 as a post-doctoral researcher, before being appointed as a tenure-tracker in the same university. Professor Le Gac is member of the director board of the Chemical Biological Microsystem Society (CBMS). Her research focuses on the use of miniaturized devices for biological and medical applications, and in particular for cancer research and the field of assisted reproductive technologies.

Séverine Le Gac

Xiujun (James) Li is Associate Professor at the University of Texas at El Paso, USA. Prior to University of Texas at El Paso, Professor Li was a NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley working with Richard A. Mathies and a NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Harvard University & Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, working with Professor Whitesides. Professor Li has received various awards including the 2018 Outstanding Faculty Dissertation Research Mentoring Award, UTEP, the 2017-2018 Outstanding Efforts Award, UTEP and a 2017 Innovation Center Proof-of-Concept Grant, Medical Center of the Americas Foundation (MCA). Professor Li’s research focusses on bioanalysis, biomedical & environmental applications, and catalysis using microfluidic lab-on-a-chip platforms and nanotechnology.

Xiujun Li

Ian Papautsky is Richard and Loan Hill Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, USA and Co-Director of the NSF Center for Advanced Design & Manufacturing of Integrated Microfluidics. The Papautsky lab is focused on innovating blood analysis technologies, using microfluidics and sensing, for precision and point-of-care medicine. The Papautsky lab also pioneered the inertial microfluidics technology for label-free isolation and analysis of rare cells. The Papautsky lab has recently focused on capture and molecular profile analysis of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and circulating tumor microemboli (CTM), whose molecular profile can provide a “cancer census” that is more holistic representation of disease state and active pathophysiology.

Ian Papautsky

Weian Zhao is an Associate Professor at the Sue and Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center, Chao Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, Department of Biomedical Engineering, and Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences at University of California, Irvine. Dr. Zhao is also the co-founder of Velox Biosystems Inc, and Amberstone Biosciences Inc, start-up companies that aim to develop technologies for rapid diagnosis and immunotherapeutic discovery, respectively. Dr. Zhao’s research aims to 1) elucidate and eventually control the fate of transplanted stem cells and immune cells to treat cancer and autoimmune diseases, and 2) develop novel miniaturized devices for early diagnosis and monitoring for conditions including sepsis, antibiotic resistance and cancer. Dr. Zhao has received several awards including the MIT’s Technology Review TR35 Award: the world’s top 35 innovators under the age of 35 and NIH Director’s New Innovator Award. Dr. Zhao completed his BSc and MSc degrees in Chemistry at Shandong University and then obtained his PhD in Chemistry at McMaster University in 2008. During 2008-2011, Dr. Zhao was a Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and MIT.

Weian Zhao

Recent Publications in Lab on a Chip by our newest Advisory Board members

Simplified Drop-seq workflow with minimized bead loss using a bead capture and processing microfluidic chip

Biočanin, M, Bues, J.Dainese, R. Amstad, E., Deplancke, B.

Lab Chip, 2019, 19, 1610-1620

Scalable production of double emulsion drops with thin shells

Vian, A., Reuse, B., Amstad, E.

Lab Chip, 2018, 18, 1936-1942

Controlling the distance of highly confined droplets in a capillary by interfacial tension for merging on-demand

Ferraro, D, Serra, M., Filippi, D., Zago, L., Guglielmin, E., Pierno, M., Descroix, S., Viovy, J.-L., Mistura, G.

Lab Chip, 2019, 19, 136-146

3D-printing enabled micro-assembly of a microfluidic electroporation system for 3D tissue engineering

Zhu, Q., Hamilton, M., Vasquez, B., He, M.

Lab Chip, 2019, 19, 2362-2372

Microfluidic on-demand engineering of exosomes towards cancer immunotherapy

Zheng Zhao, Jodi McGill, Pamela Gamero-Kubotac and Mei He.

Lab Chip, 2019, 19, 1877-1886

Wearable sensors: Modalities, challenges, and prospects

Heikenfeld, J., Jajack, A., Rogers, J., Gutruf, P., Tian, L., Pan, T., Li, R., Khine, M., Kim, J., Wang, J., Kim, J.

Lab Chip, 2018, 18, 217-248

Interdigitated microelectronic bandage augments hemostasis and clot formation at low applied voltage: In vitro and in vivo

Hardy, E.T., Wang, Y.J., Iyer, S., Mannino, R.G., Sakurai, Y., Barker, T.H., Chi, T., Youn, Y., Wang, H., Brown, A.C., Lam, W.A.

Lab Chip, 2018, 18, 2985-2993

Immuno-capture of extracellular vesicles for individual multi-modal characterization using AFM, SEM and Raman spectroscopy

Beekman, P., Enciso-Martinez, A., Rho, H.S., Pujari, S.P., Lenferink, A., Zuilhof, H., Terstappen, L.W.M.M., Otto, C., Le Gac, S.

Lab Chip, 2019, 19, 2526-2536

Size-dependent enrichment of leukocytes from undiluted whole blood using shear-induced diffusion

Zhou, J., Papautsky, I.

Lab Chip, 2019, 19, 3416-3426

Single stream inertial focusing in low aspect-ratio triangular microchannels

Mukherjee, P., Wang, X., Zhou, J., Papautsky, I.

Lab Chip, 2019, 19, 147-157

An ultrasensitive test for profiling circulating tumor DNA using integrated comprehensive droplet digital detection

Chen-Yin Ou, Tam Vu, Jonathan T. Grunwald, Michael Toledano, Jan Zimak, Melody Toosky, Byron Shen, Jason A. Zell, Enrico Gratton, Timothy J. Abram and Weian Zhao

Lab Chip, 2019, 19, 993-1005

Functional TCR T cell screening using single-cell droplet microfluidics

Aude I. Segaliny, Guideng Li, Lingshun Kong, Ci Ren, Xiaoming Chen, Jessica K. Wang, David Baltimore, Guikai Wu and Weian Zhao

Lab Chip, 2018, 18, 3733-3749

We hope you enjoy reading this collection, which we have made free to access until the 15^th March 2020 with an RSC Publishing Account.

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Processing one-trillionth the size of a liter

07 Jan 2020

By Burcu Gumuscu.

A picoliter of a droplet is approximately 1 µm. It is so small that a raindrop can contain thousands of picoliters. Despite the small quantity, precise control of picoliter size liquids spawns a growing number of applications including in point-of-care tools and drug synthesis. Such a task is not easy to achieve for conventional liquid-manipulation methods due to precision, evaporation and the ease of post-processing problems.

When it comes to small volume liquid handling, no other platform would be better than microfluidic devices. As such, a recent Lab Chip paper from Prof. Bai Yang’s Lab at Jilin University in China demonstrates the fabrication of a microfluidic platform to handle sub-picoliter size droplets. The authors use glass as the core material of the microchips because glass is mechanically strong and it enables higher precision in droplet manipulation (Figure 1). In the paper, pressure-controlled syringes are used to dispense down to 0,5 picoliters in a series of trapezoidal-shaped microchambers, each composed of 10 subunits. The boundaries of the subunits act as pressure barriers, preventing the liquid from flowing through the entire microchamber and allowing for fine-tuning of the volume to be handled. The authors also showed that the working range, stability, and precision of the device could be increased by adjusting the boundary properties and microchamber dimensions (e.g., height). However, the magnitude of the minimum volume will still be bound to two main factors. (1) The resolution of the fabrication technology determines the microchannel and boundary dimensions. (2) Laplace pressure difference between the channel and the boundaries determines the accuracy of the device. The smaller channels yield decreased accuracy due to higher pressure differences between the boundary-microchannel interfaces. Relying on these design criteria, the authors fabricated up to three interconnected picoliter-volume injection units. Combined units work together to synthesize gold nanoparticles and nanorods with a wide size range. The authors believe that the platform can be further used in several different applications including lab-on-chip platforms, analytical chemistry for medicine approaches, quantitative cell cultures, and even drug injection into single cells.

Figure 1. The microfluidic device for sub-picoliter volume liquid handling

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

Pressure-controlled microfluidic sub-picoliter ultramicro-volume syringes based on integrated micro-nanostructure arrays

Nianzuo Yu, Yongshun Liu, Shuli Wang, Xiaoduo Tang, Peng Ge, Jingjie Nan, Junhu Zhang, and Bai Yang, Lab Chip, 2019, Lab on a Chip Hot Articles

DOI: 10.1039/C9LC00730J

About the Webwriter

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Lab on a Chip presents prestigious prizes at MicroTAS 2019

22 Nov 2019

By Aleksandra Denisin.

The µTAS 2019 Conference was held from 27-31^st October in Basel, Switzerland. Maria Southall, Deputy Editor of Lab on a Chip, attended the conference and announced the prestigious Lab on a Chip awards which include the Pioneers of Miniaturization Lectureship (in partnership with Dolomite Microfluidics), the Widmer Young Researcher Poster Prize and the Art in Science competition (in partnership with NIST). All three competitions received many fantastic submissions and we are delighted to present the winners, below:

Lab on a Chip/Dolomite “Pioneers of Miniaturization” Lectureship

Professor Hang Lu (Georgia Tech, USA) was awarded the 14th “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. Professor Lu received a certificate, a monetary award and delivered a short lecture at the conference.

Left to right: Mark Gilligan (Dolomite), Hang Lu (winner) and Maria Southall (Lab on a Chip)

Hang Lu (winner) delivering her lecture

Art in Science Competition

Greg Cooksey from the National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST) and Lab on a Chip Deputy Editor Maria Southall presented the Art in Science award to Joseph de Rutte from UCLA for his entry “A Cell’s World”. This award aims to highlight the aesthetic value in scientific illustrations while still conveying scientific merit.

Left to right: Greg Cooksey (NIST), Joseph de Rutte (UCLA, winner) and Maria Southall (Lab on a Chip)

Fluorescent image of uniform droplets formed using structured microparticles. Fluorescently labeled particles are suspended in a water solution and agitated with oil and surfactant. This platform is used to encapsulate single-cells and measure their secretions.

Winning image ‘A Cell’s World’: Fluorescent image of uniform droplets formed using structured microparticles. Fluorescently labeled particles are suspended in a water solution and agitated with oil and surfactant. This platform is used to encapsulate single-cells and measure their secretions.

Widmer Young Researcher Poster Prize

The Widmer Young Researcher Poster Prize was awarded to Roberto Rodriguez-Moncayo from the Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del IPN, Mexico, for his poster on “Integrated microfluidic device for universal secretory immunophenotyping studies for adherent and non adherent cells”.

Maria Southall (left) with Roberto Rodriguez-Moncayo (winner)

Maria Southall (left, Lab on a Chip) with Roberto Rodriguez-Moncayo (winner)

Congratulations to all the winners at the conference, we look forward to seeing you at µTAS 2020 in Palm Springs, California, USA!

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Art in Science Competition Winner and runners up announced at MicroTAS 2019

21 Nov 2019

By Aleksandra Denisin.

Lab on a Chip and the National Institute of Standards Technology (NIST) presented the Art in Science award at the µTAS 2019 Conference on the 30^th October 2019 at the Lab on a Chip/Royal Society of Chemistry booth. The award highlights the aesthetic value in scientific illustrations while still conveying scientific merit. The competition received many fantastic submissions this year which were judged by Jeanne Andres, Lab on a Chip Executive Editor, Greg Cooksey, NIST representative and Hang Lu, Lab on a Chip Associate Editor .

Greg Cooksey and Maria Southall (Lab on a Chip Deputy Editor) announced the winner of the competition was Joesph de Rutte (UCLA) with his entry “A Cell’s World” and presented Mr de Rutte with his award and certificate.

A Cell’s World

Joseph de Rutte, UCLA, USA

Fluorescent image of uniform droplets formed using structured microparticles. Fluorescently labeled particles are suspended in a water solution and agitated with oil and surfactant. This platform is used to encapsulate single-cells and measure their secretions.

Left to right: Greg Cooksey (NIST), Joseph de Rutte (UCLA, winner) and Maria Southall (Lab on a Chip)

The runners up are:

MicroQuasar – Laura Barillas, Leibniz Institute for Plasma Science and Technology (INP), Germany

Sensing in Three-Dimensions – Michael Restaino, University of Maryland, USA

Stars and Diamonds made out of bone cells – Charlotte Yvanoff, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium

A big thank you to all the contributors this year!

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MicroTAS 2019 Student Mixer

07 Nov 2019

By Aleksandra Denisin.

Written by Darius Rackus

Do you know which country has an airport with an IATA code of “OMG”? How about when the most recent Swiss canton joined the Swiss Confederacy? Or do you know where the article first describing a miniaturized total analysis system was published? For trivia boffins and scientists in microfluidics, these were the types of questions asked at the third annual student mixer at the International Conference on Miniaturized Systems for Chemistry and Life Sciences (microTAS).

For the past three years, microTAS has been hosting networking events for postgraduate students and female faculty. This year, students were invited to a pub quiz where they could not only test their trivia knowledge but also meet peers from different labs and different countries.

Over 200 students showed up for the night, and at least 150 participated in the quiz. The one rule given was that teams had to include students from at least two different countries and students were quick to form very diverse teams. The winning team had students representing Switzerland, China, Japan, and Israel. While there was lots of Swiss chocolate to be won, the main benefit was making new connections, which can sometimes be daunting at large international conferences.

The event was hosted by the Chemical and Biological Miniaturization Society (CBMS) and prizes were sponsored by the Royal Society of Chemistry, the journal Analytical Chemistry (ACS), and Dolomite. The winning team took home microfluidics-branded hoodies and 400 g each of fine Swiss chocolate. Of course, winning isn’t everything and networking events like this are great opportunities for connecting early career researchers. Hopefully this will continue to be a fixture of future microTAS conferences.

MicroTAS student mixer. Photo credit: André Kling

For the curious, the answers to the questions are a) Namibia (Omega Airport), b) Canton Jura was formed and joined in 1979, and c) Manz, Graber and Widmer coined the term “µTAS” in their 1990 Sensors and Actuators B publication.

About the webwriter

Darius Rackus (right) is a postdoctoral researcher in the Dittrich Bionalytics Group at ETH Zürich. His research interests are in developing integrated microfluidic tools for healthcare and bioanalysis

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