A modular, reversible sealing, and reusable microfluidic device for drug screening.

Preclinical tests for evaluating potential drug candidates using conventional protocols can be exhaustive and high-cost processes. Microfluidic technologies that can speed up this process and allow fast screening of drugs are promising alternatives. This work presents the design, concept, and operational conditions of a simple, modular, and reversible sealing microdevice useful for drug screening.

An improved acridine orange staining of DNA/RNA.

New tools are desirable to examine the metabolic state of individual cells within tissues. We proposed a fluorescence-based procedure consisting of acridine orange staining and fast green counterstaining (AO-FG) to improve the selectivity of the former for nucleic acids (acridine orange stains both DNA and RNA with different fluorescence colors), with no interference from proteins. We compared this test with the biochemical quantification of the relative amounts of RNA and DNA in selected rat ventral prostate samples and PC3 cells.