Exploitation of a microfluidic device capable of generating size-tunable droplets for gene delivery |
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Authors: | Huei-Wen Wu Yen-Chang Huang Chao-Liang Wu Gwo-Bin Lee |
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Affiliation: | (1) Department of Engineering Science, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, 701, Taiwan;(2) Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, 701, Taiwan;(3) Medical Electronics and Device Technology Center, Industrial Technology Research Institute, Hsinchu, 310, Taiwan |
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Abstract: | This study presents a new microfluidic chip that generates micro-scale emulsion droplets for gene delivery applications. Compared
with conventional methods of droplet formation, the proposed chip can create uniform droplets (size variation <7.1%) and hence
enhance the efficiency of the subsequent gene delivery. A new microfluidic chip was developed in this study, which used a
new design with a pneumatic membrane chamber integrated into a T-junction microchannel. Traditionally, the size of droplets
was controlled by the flow rate ratio of the continuous and disperse phase flows, which can be controlled by syringe pumps.
In this study, a pneumatic chamber near the intersection of the T-junction channel was designed to locally change the flow
velocity and the shear force. When the upper air chamber was filled with compressed air, the membrane was deflected and then
the droplet size could be fine-tuned accordingly. Experimental data showed that using the new design, the higher the air pressure
applied to the active tunable membrane, the smaller the droplet size. Finally, droplets were used as carriers for DNA to be
transfected into the Cos-7 cells. It was also experimentally found that the size of the emulsion droplets plays an important
role on the efficiency of the gene delivery.
The preliminary results of this paper have been presented at the 2007 IEEE International Conference of Nano/Molecular Medicine
and Engineering (IEEE NANOMED 2007), Macau, China, 6–9 August, 2007. |
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Keywords: | Microfluidics MEMS Gene transfection Gene delivery Vector Emulsion |
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