iFDA Prototype Design
Cell Screening, Trapping, Recovery
The device is composed of two layers. The top layer has microwells for floating droplets trapping, and the bottom layer consists of aqueous and oil inlets for droplet generation, and a chamber structure for droplets collecting.
(a) Photographic image of iFDA device.
(b) Microscopic images of the detailed workflow.
The workflow of iFDA involves droplet generation, drop trapping for analysis, and subsequent droplet recovery. First, droplets are generated and load into the chamber. Then droplets will float into the microwells, after all the wells have been filled, the remaining droplets are purged. Then the encapsulated droplets will undergo signal detection, and cells of interest will be selected and labeled. For droplets recovery, we can simply flip the device and purge the cells.
Microscopic Images
Experiments: Cell Viability Test
Left: 10x bright field image at time 0 hrs Right: 10x TRITC image at time 0 hrs
As shown in the figure, the circular shapes are droplets and an orange signal within a droplet indicates that a live cell is captured.
Current state-of-art
Conventional technologies, such as flow cytometry often involve bulky machines and requires high labor demand. The processes are also consuming and hard to track or manipulate targeted cells. Even though Bio Rad provides time efficiency and high throughput, the machines are expensive and do not allow real time-monitoring.
Therefore, iFDA is a promising technology since it addresses most of the drawbacks of the current technologies.