Nicolas Demierre

Dielectrophoretic sorting on a microfabricated flow cytometer: Label free separation of Babesia bovis infected erythrocytes

Dielectrophoresis is a method that has demonstrated great potential in cell discrimination and isolation. In this study, the dielectrophoretic sorting of normal and Babesia bovis infected erythrocytes was performed using a microfabricated flow cytometer. Separation was possible through exploitation of the dielectric differences between normal and infected erythrocytes, essentially due to the higher ionic membrane permeability of B. bovis infected cells. Sorting experiments were performed inside a microchip made from Pt microelectrodes and SU-8 channels patterned on a glass substrate. Optimum cell separation was achieved at 4 MHz using an in vitro culture of B. bovis suspended in 63 mS/m phosphate buffer and applying a sinusoidal voltage of 15 V peak-to-peak. Normal erythrocytes experienced stronger positive dielectrophoresis (pDEP) than B. bovis infected cells, moving them closer to the microelectrodes. Under these conditions it was possible to enrich the fraction of infected cells from 7 to 50% without the need of extensive sample preparation or labelling. Throughout the experiments very few microliters of sample were used, suggesting that this system may be considered suitable for integration in a low-cost automated device to be used in the in situ diagnostic of babesiosis.

Rapid, sensitive and real-time multiplexing platform for the analysis of protein and nucleic-acid biomarkers.

We describe a multiplexing technology, named Evalution, based on novel digitally encoded microparticles in microfluidic channels. Quantitative multiplexing is becoming increasingly important for research and routine clinical diagnostics, but fast, easy-to-use, flexible and highly reproducible technologies are needed to leverage the advantages of multiplexing. The presented technology has been tailored to ensure (i) short assay times and high reproducibility thanks to reaction-limited binding regime, (ii) dynamic control of assay conditions and real-time binding monitoring allowing optimization of multiple parameters within a single assay run, (iii) compatibility with various immunoassay formats such as coflowing the samples and detection antibodies simultaneously and hence simplifying workflows, (iv) analyte quantification based on initial binding rates leading to increased system dynamic range and (v) high sensitivity via enhanced fluorescence collection. These key features are demonstrated with assays for proteins and nucleic acids showing the versatility of this technology.

A virtual valve for smooth contamination-free flow switching

We present a channel geometry that allows for clean switching between different inlets of a microchip without any contamination of the inlets or the downstream flow. We drive this virtual valve with a pneumatic pressure setup that minimizes disturbance of the downstream flow during the switching procedure by simultaneous variation of the pressures applied to the different inlets. We assess the efficiency of the setup by spectroscopic measurement of downstream dye concentrations, and demonstrate its practical utility by sequentially constructing multiple layers of alginate hydrogel. The method is potentially useful for a whole series of further applications, such as changing perfusion liquids for cell culture and cell analysis, metering, chemical-reaction initiation and multi-sample chromatography, to name a few.