Microfluidic platform combining droplets and magnetic tweezers: application to HER2 expression in cancer diagnosis

• DOI: 10.1038/srep25540
• Publication Date: 2016-05-09T09:25:29Z
• Authors: Davide Ferraro; Jérôme Champ; Bruno Teste; Marco Serra; Laurent Malaquin; Jean-Louis Viovy; Patricia de Cremoux; Stephanie Descroix
• Keywords: [SDV.IB] Life Sciences [q-bio]/Bioengineering; 570; Receptor, ErbB-2; Magnetic Phenomena; [SDV.BBM]Life Sciences [q-bio]/Biochemistry; Microfluidics; 610; [SDV.CAN]Life Sciences [q-bio]/Cancer; 02 engineering and technology; 01 natural sciences; Article; 3. Good health; 0104 chemical sciences; Calibration; Cell Line, Tumor; Humans; Microfluidics; Neoplasms; Receptor, ErbB-2; Magnetic Phenomena; Multidisciplinary; [SDV.CAN] Life Sciences [q-bio]/Cancer; Cell Line, Tumor; Neoplasms; Calibration; [SDV.BBM] Life Sciences [q-bio]/Biochemistry, Molecular Biology; Humans; [SDV.IB]Life Sciences [q-bio]/Bioengineering; 0210 nano-technology; Molecular Biology

AbstractThe development of precision medicine, together with the multiplication of targeted therapies and associated molecular biomarkers, call for major progress in genetic analysis methods, allowing increased multiplexing and the implementation of more complex decision trees, without cost increase or loss of robustness. We present a platform combining droplet microfluidics and magnetic tweezers, performing RNA purification, reverse transcription and amplification in a fully automated and programmable way, in droplets of 250nL directly sampled from a microtiter-plate. This platform decreases sample consumption about 100 fold as compared to current robotized platforms and it reduces human manipulations and contamination risk. The platform’s performance was first evaluated on cell lines, showing robust operation on RNA quantities corresponding to less than one cell and then clinically validated with a cohort of 21 breast cancer samples, for the determination of their HER2 expression status, in a blind comparison with an established routine clinical analysis.