Abstract
Rapid and accurate identification of Candida albicans from among other candida species is critical for cost-effective treatment and antifungal drug assays. Shape is a critical biomarker indicating cell type, cell cycle, and environmental conditions; however, most microfluidic techniques have been focused only on size-based particle/cell manipulation. This study demonstrates a sheathless shape-based separation of particles/cells using a viscoelastic non-Newtonian fluid. The size of C. albicans was measured at 37 °C depending on the incubation time (0 h, 1 h, and 2 h). The effects of flow rates on the flow patterns of candida cells with different shapes were examined. Finally, 2-h-incubated candida cells with germ tube formations (≥26 μm) were separated from spherical candida cells and shorter candida cells with a separation efficiency of 80.9% and a purity of 91.2% at 50 μL/min.
Highlights
Candida albicans (C. albicans) is known to be the most pathogenic among more than 150 species of the genus Candida: it can cause chronic infections in the bloodstream
We described a shape-based C. albicans separation device consisting of two stages for cell focusing and separation using a viscoelastic fluid
The flow rate-dependent focusing characteristics of the cells were examined at 25 ≤ Q ≤ 300 μL/min
Summary
Candida albicans (C. albicans) is known to be the most pathogenic among more than 150 species of the genus Candida: it can cause chronic infections in the bloodstream. Our group demonstrated a microfluidic device for viscoelastic sheathless separation, which consisted of initialization of all the particles and continuous separation of particles through size-dependent lateral displacement [41,42,43] This technique was utilized to manipulate biological samples, such as malaria parasites and blood components, it has not been applied in shape-dependent particle/cell separation. The flow characteristics of candida cells with different shapes were examined: using the effect of shape-dependent elastic forces, the device was utilized for shape-based separation of rod-shaped candida cells from spherical candida cells with high purity at a flow rate of 50 μL/min for clinical diagnosis and pharmaceutical research [6,7]. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first report on the separation of candida cells based on germ tube formation using microfluidic techniques
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