Micro and nano-platforms for biological cell analysis

In this paper some technological platforms developed for biological cell analysis will be presented and compared to existing systems. In brief, we present a novel micro cell culture chamber based on diffusion feeding of cells, into which cells can be introduced and extracted after culturing using normal pipettes, thus making it readily usable for clinical laboratories. To enhance the functionality of such a chamber we have been investigating the use of active or passive 3D surface modifications. Active modifications involve miniature electrodes able to record electrical or electrochemical signals from the cells, while passive modifications involve the presence of a peptide nanotube based scaffold for the cell culturing that mimics the in vivo environment. Two applications involving fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) analysis and cancer cell sorting are presented, as examples of further analysis that can be done after cell culturing. A platform able to automate the entire process from cell culturing to cell analysis by means of simple plug and play of various self-contained, individually fabricated modules is finally described.