Cells' local mechanical environment can be as important in guiding cellular responses as many well-characterized biochemical cues. Hydrogels that mimic the native extracellular matrix can provide these mechanical cues to encapsulated cells, allowing for the study of their impact on cellular behaviours. Moreover, by harnessing cellular responses to mechanical cues, hydrogels can be used to create tissues in vitro for regenerative medicine applications and for disease modelling.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe rapid depletion of oxygen during irradiation at ultra-high dose rate calls for tissue oximeters capable of high temporal resolution. This study demonstrates a water-soluble phosphorescent nanoprobe and fiber-coupled instrument, which together are used to measure the kinetics of oxygen depletion at 200 Hz during irradiation of in vitro solutions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFlow-based cytometry methods are widely used to analyze heterogeneous cell populations. However, their use for small molecule studies remains limited due to bulky fluorescent labels that often interfere with biochemical activity in cells. In contrast, radiotracers require minimal modification of their target molecules and can track biochemical processes with negligible interference and high specificity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntegrated bioassay systems that combine microfluidics and radiation detectors can deliver medical radiopharmaceuticals to live cells with precise timing, while minimizing radiation dose and sample volume. However, the spatial resolution of many radiation imaging systems is limited to bulk cell populations. Here, we demonstrate microfluidics-coupled radioluminescence microscopy (μF-RLM), a new integrated system that can image radiotracer uptake in live adherent cells growing inside microincubators with spatial resolution better than 30 μm.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn vivo molecular imaging can measure the average kinetics and movement routes of injected cells through the body. However, owing to non-specific accumulation of the contrast agent and its efflux from the cells, most of these imaging methods inaccurately estimate the distribution of the cells. Here, we show that single human breast cancer cells loaded with mesoporous silica nanoparticles concentrating the Ga radioisotope and injected into immunodeficient mice can be tracked in real time from the pattern of annihilation photons detected using positron emission tomography, with respect to anatomical landmarks derived from X-ray computed tomography.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe demonstrated the operation of an acoustomicrofluidic device composed of a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) microchannel and a slanted-finger interdigitated transducer (SF-IDT), for the on-demand splitting of droplets in an active, accurate, rapid, and size-controllable manner. A narrow beam of surface acoustic waves (SAWs) that emanated from the SF-IDT exerted an acoustic radiation force (ARF) on the droplet's water-oil interface due to the acoustic contrast between the two fluids. The ARF split the mother droplet into two or more daughter droplets of various volumes in a split ratio that was readily controlled by varying the applied voltage or the flow rate.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEngineering inertial lift forces and elastic lift forces is explored to transfer microparticles across laminar streams from non-Newtonian to Newtonian fluid. A co-stream of non-Newtonian flow loaded with microparticles (9.9 and 2.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe demonstrate an acoustofluidic device using Lamb waves (LWs) to manipulate polystyrene (PS) microparticles suspended in a sessile droplet of water. The LW-based acoustofluidic platform used in this study is advantageous in that the device is actuated over a range of frequencies without changing the device structure or electrode pattern. In addition, the device is simple to operate and cheap to fabricate.
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