Abstract

Droplet-based Microfluidics for Cancer Research

Valérie Taly, CNRS Research Director, Group Leader and Professor, Université Paris Cité

Droplet-based microfluidics has led to the development of highly powerful tools with great potential in High-Throughput Screening where individual assays are compartmentalized within aqueous droplets acting as independent microreactors. Thanks to the combination of a decrease of assay volume and an increase of throughput, this technology goes beyond the capacities of conventional screening systems. Added to the flexibility and versatility of platform designs, such progresses in the manipulation of sub-nanoliter droplets has allowed to dramatically increase experimental level of control and precision. The presentation will aim at demonstrating through selected example, the great potential of this technology for biotechnology and cancer research. A first part of the presentation will exemplify how microfluidic systems can be used to compartmentalize and assay various types of cells without deleterious effects on their viability within complex and controlled platforms. The application of microfluidic systems for different cell-based assays will be demonstrated. Illustrative examples of droplet-based microfluidic platforms with high potential impact for cancer research will be presented. We will also show how by combining microfluidic systems and clinical advances in molecular diagnostic we have developed an original method to perform millions of single molecule PCR in parallel to detect and quantify a minority of target sequences in complex mixture of DNA with a sensitivity unreachable by conventional procedures. To demonstrate the pertinence of our procedures to overcome clinical oncology challenges, the results of clinical studies will be presented.