Published on January 24, 2013 at 4:05 AM
To take advantage of that, the researchers built rectangular microfluidic chips, about the size of a quarter, with 40 to 70 parallel channels. Cells are suspended in a solution with the material to be delivered and flowed through the channel at high speed - about one meter per second. Halfway through the channel, the cells pass through a constriction about 30 to 80 percent smaller than the cells' diameter. The cells don't suffer any irreparable damage, and they maintain their normal functions after the treatment.
Special delivery
The research team is now further pursuing stem cell manipulation, which holds promise for treating a wide range of diseases. They have already shown that they can transform human fibroblast cells into pluripotent stem cells, and now plan to start working on delivering the proteins needed to differentiate stem cells into specialized tissues.
Another promising application is delivering quantum dots - nanoparticles made of semiconducting metals that fluoresce. These dots hold promise for labeling individual proteins or other molecules inside cells, but scientists have had trouble getting them through the cell membrane without getting trapped in endosomes.
In a paper published in November, working with MIT graduate student Jungmin Lee and chemistry professor Moungi Bawendi, the researchers showed that they could get quantum dots inside human cells grown in the lab, without the particles becoming confined in endosomes or clumping together. They are now working on getting the dots to tag specific proteins inside the cells.
The researchers are also exploring the possibility of using the new system for vaccination. In theory, scientists could remove immune cells from a patient, run them through the microfluidic device and expose them to a viral protein, and then put them back in the patient. Once inside, the cells could provoke an immune response that would confer immunity against the target viral protein.
Source: Massachusetts Institute of Technology