Abstract

Parallel Single Cancer Cell Analysis

Séverine Le Gac, Professor, Applied Microfluidics for Bioengineering Research, University of Twente

Parallel single cell analysis is the missing tool to decipher the relationship between disease development and individual cellular profile within a cell population. In the field of cancer research, parallel single cell analysis has tremendous potential for the identification of specific cancer biomarkers, and the development of personalized treatments based on cancer cell profiling of a patient. Here, we present the development of microfluidic tools to achieve essential steps of a parallel single cell analysis protocol, namely for the large-scale trapping of individual cells in dedicated structures, for in situ cell staining for, e.g., cancer cell identification in mixed cell populations, electrical lysis of individual cells followed by the retrieval of their content, and mapping of point mutations after on-chip whole genome amplification and off-chip sequencing.