Non-invasive Thermohydrodynamic Approach for Fast Cell Manipulation at the Microscale

• DOI: 10.1007/s13206-024-00145-3
• Publication Date: 2024-03-25T12:01:49Z
• Authors: Víctor de la Asun...; Marta Pacheco; Beatriz Jurado-Sá...; Estela Lapeira; Maialen Aginagalde; M. Mounir Bou-Ali; Alberto Escarpa
• Keywords: Microscale chemistry; Microchannel

Abstract Thermal gradients have emerged as a promising technique for manipulating and sorting biological material at the microscale, holding considerable potential in lab-on-a-chip technology. Herein, we propose non-invasive thermohydrodynamic approach fast cell manipulation using microfluidic open-to-air device. Cell discrimination is achieved by simply changing temperature gradient toward control of convective effect on their displacement. First, size morphology/roughness-based motion capabilities were modeled polystyrene (PS) microparticles with different sizes (5 20 μm) polycaprolactone (PCL) microspheres, respectively. Computational fluid dynamics simulations generated flow also carried out to demonstrate influence both Marangoni effects PS particle displacement, where thermally induced was not enough move inside channel, but combination convection together effect. Indeed, small particles followed full path, whereas bigger ones (20 exhibited rolling substrate from cold side hot side. Also, relationship between in-flow speed PCL (≈ surface roughness confirmed driving force this convection-based approach. Then, device successfully used separate Henrietta Lacks cancer cells (HeLa) red blood (RBCs) fibroblast (HFF-1) cells. To end, thermal tailored achieve desired effect, showing highly versatile performance. Both models (HeLa-RBCs HeLa-HFF-1), due rationale tweaking imposed (ΔT = 10 K, 303–293 ΔT 5 303–298 K), efficiently separated less than 60 s, respectively; excellent viabilities. The proposed holds promise methods portable instrumentation. parallelization thermal-convective opens new avenues early disease diagnosis (liquid biopsies) or study systems, even physiological temperatures impact (organ)-on-a-chip technologies.