| 초록 |
Microfluidics and BioMEMS technology has increasingly been used as a tool for studying small volumes of tissue and even individual cells. One of the most important benefits of microfluidic technology is the potential to build devices that analyze and sort mammalian cells. The "sorting problem" typically requires that a few cells be selected and isolated from a larger population of hundreds, thousands or even millions of other cells. For example, cancer tumor cells may reside among a large population of healthy cells, but it would be of great interest to identify, isolate and study only the cancer cells. In another application, one may want to determine the number of white blood cells within a sample of blood. We have developed microfluidic devices that enable researchers to select cells from a population by a variety of methods, including antibody staining, dielectrophoretic selection, and physical size selection. These devices have applications in cancer research where cancer cells must be identified from normal tissue, but where only small samples of tissue are available. In this talk, we will present some of our microfluidic cell sorting devices, discuss their physical principles, and their use in biological applications. |
