Cell Analysis

Biomechanics

An advantage of accurate fluid control is seen in micropipette aspiration. This method is a powerful non-invasive technique to evaluate how biomechanical properties of single cells or tissue govern cell shape, cell response to mechanical stimuli, transition from nontumorigenic to tumorigenic state or morphogenesis.

Cell sorting

Many research applications call for sorting and isolating cells from a heterogeneous cell mixture. The need to isolate rare cells such as circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from blood samples increases the demand for cell sorting devices. As opposed to conventional instrumentation, microfluidic devices are easy to use, smaller, versatile, and affordable.

High-throughput single-cell analysis

Analysis of healthy and diseased tissues, homogeneous at the macroscopic scale can reveal striking heterogeneities at cellular level. This variability is particularly well illustrated in polyclonal tumors which constantly undergo mutations. In this respect, single cell analysis is necessary to fully capture the complexity of such tissues.

Single-cell analysis

Single-cell analysis allows one to study tissues at single-cell level. It impacts drug discovery for example as tumor tissues are composed of populations of different cells mutation it’s important to have the ability to test different drugs on each cell to understand their efficiency.

Working at cellular scale equally exposes many variations in gene expression: from specific biomarkers to insignificant delays in gene expression. High throughput analysis is then needed to multiply the number of profiled cells and discriminate relevant biomarkers from intrinsic population noise.

Droplet microfluidics is particularly well suited and extensively used for high throughput single-cell analysis: individual cells are isolated and confined at high speed in pico-volumes to analyze biological processes at the cellular level in this context having a precise control of the flow is a key parameter to have reproducible results.

Biomechanical studies

Microfluidics allows also for the monitoring and control of chemical or biological events for cell detection and sorting. Cell detection is generally performed using optical methods such as FACS (Fluorescent Activated Cell Sorting). Flow cytometry is the technique used to detect and measure physical and chemical characteristics of a population of cells or particles. This technique is widespread for cell analysis (size, shape and granularity)

Cell sorting

Microfluidics allows also for the precise monitoring and control of chemical or biological events for cell detection and sorting for example. Cell detection is generally performed using optical methods such as FACS (Fluorescent Activated Cell Sorting). Flow Cytometry, such as FACS ( Fluorescent Activated Cell Sorting) is the technique used to detect and measure physical and chemical characteristics of a population of cells or particles. This technique is one of the most widespread methods for cell analysis (size, shape, and granularity)