Abstract

Electrical Property Evaluation of Cells Based on Continuous-Flow Electrorotation

Masahiro Motosuke, Associate professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Tokyo University of Science

The electric properties of cancer cells reflect their types and drug resistance status. The electrorotation is a non-invasive and label-free technique to obtain the electrical properties of cells, conductivity and permittivity of cytoplasm or membrane, using image analysis of the rotational behavior of the cells under a rotating electric field. However, conventional electrorotation has issues with its low throughput due to difficulties of cell handling. Our research group has developed a novel electrorotation platform enabling multi-cell analysis under continuous-flow conditions. In the developed microfluidic system, the cells receive a vertically-rotating electric field and result in vertical rotation. We investigated the effectiveness of the vertical rotation analysis of cells and confirmed that the proposed electrorotaion device can be used for the measurement of the electrical properties of cancer cells.