A high throughput biocompatible insulator based dielectrophoretic (iDEP) lab chip for patterning and fusion of biological cells

Abstract

The ability to precisely pair cells without damaging them has been critical in generating high cell-fusion yields. We present here an insulator-based dielectrophoretic (iDEP) microfluidic lab-chip capable of manipulating ~ 6000 single cells or cell pairs per experimental operation, even with a large variance among the cell population. An ITO glass with a thin PDMS membrane patterned by a lift-off process consisting of a vast array of 6000 holes acts as microwells for pairing and fusion operations. We demonstrate the application of our chip by showing electrofusion between CT26 and bone marrow-derived dendritic cells (BMDC) with fusion efficiencies up to 70% (3000–3500 cells) among paired cells. We extend our study to show that our microfluidic chip is biocompatible and safe from electrical fields by observing properties of fused cells like cell viability of 60% (1800–2200 cells), fluorescence-labeled intracellular materials from CT26 and BMDC, mixed cell morphology over 4 days of culture.