Designing Polymeric Microfluidic Platforms for Biomedical Applications

Micro- and Nanotechnology have the potential to offer a smart solution for diagnostics and academia research with rapid, low cost, robust analysis systems to facilitate biological analyses. New, high throughput microfluidic platforms have the potential to surpass in performance the conventional analyses systems in use today. The overall goal of this PhD project is to address two different areas using microfluidics :
i) Chromosome analysis by metaphase FISH such a platform, if successful, can immediately substitute the routine, labor-intensive, glass slide-based FISH analyses in Clinical Cytogenetics laboratories. During the course of this project, initially the suitability of the polymeric chip substrate was tested and a microfluidic device was developed for performing interphase FISH analysis. With this device, the key factors involved in chromosome spreading crucial to FISH analysis were further investigated. Based on the insights gained, a micro splashing device was designed to achieve well-spread chromosomes and a rapidly assembled microFISH device was presented for metaphase analysis. Further, a single polymeric microfluidic device was developed to semi-automate the FISH analysis.
ii) Culturing brain slices and monitoring the integration of neuronal stem cells upon cultured brain slices. These studies will aid to design novel therapeutic approaches for neurodegenerative disease. The aim of this project was to create a microfludic cell culture chamber and keep a brain slice alive in it for long time under stable conditions. Such a system was developed and tested first with PC12 cell line culture, followed by brain slice culture. This culture system was later adapted to suit long-term culturing and was successfully demonstrated.