Improvement of Background Solution for Optically Induced Dielectrophoresis-Based Cell Manipulation in a Microfluidic System.

Po-Yu Chu,Chia-Hsun Hsieh,Min-Hsien Wu,Chih-Yu Chen

doi:10.3389/fbioe.2021.759205

Abstract

Optically induced dielectrophoresis (ODEP) is effective for cell manipulation. However, its utilization has been limited by the requirement of solution with low conductivity. This issue has been ignored in ODEP-relevant studies. To address this issue, this study aims to investigate to what extent the cell viability and performance of ODEP-based cell manipulation are affected by low conductivity conditions. Additionally, this study aims to modify sucrose solutions to reduce the impacts caused by low-conductivity solutions. Results revealed the use of sucrose solution in ODEP operation could significantly reduce the viability of the manipulated cells by 9.1 and 38.5% after 2- and 4-h incubation, respectively. Prolonged operation time (e.g., 4 h) in sucrose solution could lead to significantly inferior performance of cell manipulation, including 47.2% reduction of ODEP manipulation velocity and 44.4% loss of the cells manipulatable by ODEP. The key finding of this study is that the use of bovine serum albumin (BSA)-supplemented sucrose solution (conductivity: 25–50 μS cm−1) might significantly increase the cell viability by 10.9–14.8% compared with that in sucrose solution after 4 h incubation. Moreover, the ODEP manipulation velocity of cells in the BSA-supplemented sucrose solution (conductivity: 25 μS cm−1) was comparable to that in sucrose solution during 4-h incubation. More importantly, compared with sucrose solution, the use of BSA-supplemented sucrose solution (conductivity: 25–50 μS cm−1) contributed high percentage (80.4–93.5%) of the cells manipulatable by ODEP during 4-h incubation. Overall, this study has provided some fundamental information relevant to the improvement of background solutions for ODEP-based cell manipulation.

Highlights

The key finding of this study is that the use of bovine serum albumin (BSA)-supplemented sucrose solution with a conductivity range of 25–50 μS cm−1 might significantly increase the cell viability by 10.9–14.8% compared with the cell viability in sucrose solution after 4 h of incubation
This study has provided some fundamental information relevant to the improvement of background solutions for Optically induced dielectrophoresis (ODEP)-based cell manipulation
This study aimed to investigate to what extent the cell viability of the manipulated cells and the performances of ODEP-based cell manipulation are affected by the background solution with low conductivity (e.g., 6.9 μS cm−1) in ODEP operation

Summary

Introduction

The manipulation of cells has a wide variety of applications [e.g., cell isolation and purification (Gupta et al, 2012; Li et al, 2015; Song et al, 2015; Chiu et al, 2016; L; D’Amico et al, 2017; Liao et al, 2018; Chu et al, 2019a; Sasan; Asiaei et al, 2019; Chu et al, 2020b; Wang et al, 2020), cell alignment and patterning (Puttaswamy et al, 2010; Lin et al, 2012), biosensing (Fatima H Labeed et al, 2003; Hoettges et al, 2007; Bambardekar et al, 2015; Song et al, 2015; Chu et al, 2019a; Wang et al, 2020), diagnostic use (Chiu et al, 2016; Liao et al, 2018; Chu et al, 2019a; Wang et al, 2020), or tissue engineering (Puttaswamy et al, 2010; Lin et al, 2012; Bambardekar et al, 2015; Song et al, 2015)]. This requirement is, to some extent, costly, time-consuming, and technically-demanding

Objectives

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Conclusion