Continuous Mechanical Indexing of Single-Cell Spheroids Using a Robot-Integrated Microfluidic Chip

摘要

In single-cell/spheroid analyses, flow cytometry plays a key role in high-throughput measurements. Among the considerable numbers of indexes available for a target evaluation, mechanical characteristics such as a Young's modulus have been focused upon as new indexes related to physiological condition. However, a continuous mechanical indexing system has yet to be achieved due to the difficulty in flow control, which brings about a fluctuation of the force sensor probe. In this letter, we propose an automated mechanical indexing system of spheroids. By utilizing a combination of two syringe pumps, we succeeded in positioning the target spheroids without an undesirable pinching. We conducted experiments on the continuous mechanical indexing of single-cell spheroids using 26 mesenchymal stem cell spheroids. The evaluation results of positioning showed that the error in the position control was 14.1