Microfluidic Technology

#microfluidics Research This paper presents a clever microfluidic approach to a persistent problem: how do you produce DNA condensate droplets with uniform size when the underlying condensation process is inherently stochastic? Their solution uses vibration-induced local vortices (VILV) generated around micropillars inside a microfluidic channel. These microvortices effectively act as semi-closed compartments, confining DNA molecules within each vortex space where they rapidly aggregate and relax into uniform spherical condensates. Each vortex is a tiny, self-contained reaction chamber formed purely by fluid dynamics. The system enables real-time observation of condensate formation, morphology, and dynamics. By tuning DNA concentration and micropillar geometry, the team demonstrated systematic control over condensate size. They also showed the ability to construct multicomponent "patchy" condensates with consistent morphology, opening the door to more complex architectures. This offers a scalable, observation-friendly tool for studying liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) and for bottom-up assembly of condensed molecular systems.

Have you Ever Seen a Liquid-based Chip? Digital microfluidics (DMF) technology uses an array of individually addressable electrodes to manipulate discrete nanoliter-sized droplets through a principle called Electrowetting-on-Dielectric (EWOD). By applying electrical signals to these electrodes, the technology eliminates the need for mechanical pumps or fixed channels, allowing for highly programmable and reconfigurable "lab-on-a-chip" workflows. Today, digital microfluidics automates clinical diagnostics and single-cell genomics through advanced labs-on-a-chip, integrating artificial intelligence to optimize drug screening, medical diagnostics, DNA analysis, cancer detection and environmental testing. This technology replaces traditional methods, enabling rapid, ultra-precise, and portable biochemical analyses with minimal sample volumes, revolutionizing personalized medicine and global food safety monitoring. 𝗖𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝗠𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗶𝘀𝗺: 𝗘𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗿𝗼𝘄𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴-𝗼𝗻-𝗗𝗶𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗰 (𝗘𝗪𝗢𝗗)  ▫️ Wettability Modulation: Water droplets naturally bead up on hydrophobic (water-repellent) surfaces. When a voltage is applied to an electrode beneath a dielectric layer, it generates an electric field that reduces the interfacial tension and the droplet's contact angle. ▫️ Asymmetric Forces: By activating an electrode adjacent to a droplet, the surface on that specific side becomes "wetable" (hydrophilic), while the other side remains hydrophobic. This creates a pressure difference (Laplace pressure) that pulls the droplet toward the energized electrode. ▫️ Sequential Movement: Droplets are transported across the chip by turning voltage on and off in a timed sequence across the electrode array, effectively "shuttling" them along a defined path. 𝗞𝗲𝘆 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗼𝗻𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗮 𝗗𝗠𝗙 𝗗𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗰𝗲 - Electrode Array: A grid of patterned electrodes (often chromium or gold) that acts as the control layer. - Dielectric Layer: A thin insulating layer (e.g., Parylene-C) that stores charge and prevents direct contact (electrolysis) between the droplet and electrode. - Hydrophobic Coating: A topcoat (e.g., Teflon or AFPs) that ensures low friction and prevents droplets from sticking or leaving traces behind. - Ground Electrode: A conductive plane or wire that completes the circuit, often provided by a transparent top plate in "two-plate" (sandwich) configurations. #DigitalMicrofluidics #Chip #Diagnostic #LifeScience #Engineering

💡 Next-Gen Cell Therapy: Can Microfluidics Solve ACT’s Biggest Challenges? 🔬 The promise of adoptive cell therapy (ACT) in oncology is undeniable, yet challenges in scalability, cost, and consistency limit its broader clinical impact. Could microfluidic technology be the breakthrough we’ve been waiting for? A recent Nature Biomedical Engineering review highlights how microfluidics is reshaping ACT manufacturing, offering precision, efficiency, and affordability across the entire workflow; from cell isolation and gene editing to expansion, functional selection, and potency assessment. 🔹 How Microfluidics is Transforming ACT 🔬 Scalable & High-Purity Cell Isolation ◾ Microfluidic sorting (FACS/MACS) enables high-speed, high-purity enrichment of tumor-reactive immune cells. ◾ Magnetic microfluidic separation (MATIC) isolates potent CD39+/CD103+ TILs from blood, bypassing the need for tumor resection. 🧬 Next-Gen Gene Editing—Beyond Viral Vectors Non-viral gene editing (mechanoporation, electroporation) reduces mutagenesis risks and cuts manufacturing costs by up to 45%. 🦠 Smarter Cell Expansion & Bioreactors ◾ Microfluidic bioreactors boost cell densities by 100x, reducing footprint and turnaround times. ◾ Enabling on-site ACT manufacturing for faster patient access. 🎯 Functional Selection of High-Potency Cells ◾ Nanovials capture single-cell cytokine secretion, allowing selection of highly cytotoxic T cells. ◾ Shear-stress assays identify strongest TCR clones based on real tumor-cell binding strength. 💡 Predicting Efficacy & Toxicity with Microphysiological Systems (MPS) ◾ 3D tumor models in MPS simulate immune responses, improving ACT potency assessment before infusion. ◾ Reducing risks of cytokine release syndrome & on-target/off-tumor toxicity. 🚀 The Future of ACT Manufacturing Microfluidics is ushering in a new era of decentralized, cost-effective, and highly potent cell therapies. With automation, AI, and advanced biomaterials, we’re moving toward a faster, safer, and more accessible future for cancer treatment. 🔗 📖 For an in-depth review of these advancements, please refer to the full article here: https://lnkd.in/d2aRpwDm #CellTherapy #AdoptiveCellTherapy #Microfluidics #TCellTherapy #GeneEditing #Biomanufacturing #Oncology #CancerTherapy

🔬 A new era of biology is coming—not just single-cell, but cell–cell. When flow cytometry first became widely adopted in the 1980s, it revolutionized immunology. Suddenly, we could dissect the immune system one cell at a time, revealing T cell subsets, memory phenotypes, activation states, and more. Entire fields flourished because we could see and sort what was previously invisible. Now imagine doing that—not with one-dimensional fluorescence signals—but with full images of each cell as it's flowing by at thousands per second. And not just of single cells, but of cell pairs, clusters, and interactions. That’s the promise of image-activated cell sorting (IACS). Our recent review in Nature Bioengineering explores how IACS is poised to drive a new biological revolution: 📄 https://lnkd.in/guMkSxqJ At its core, IACS combines high-throughput microscopy, real-time image processing, and precision microfluidic sorting, opening the door to analyze and isolate cells based on morphology, subcellular localization, cell-cell contact, cell secretions and more. 💡 At UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, I’ve had the privilege of watching and contributing to many of these advances emerge—from our collaborations with Keisuke Goda, Bahram Jalali and Kevin Tsia on STEAM to the early FIRE imaging system (Eric Diebold, Ph.D.) that now powers BD’s FACSDiscover CellView, to participating in the "Serendipiter" developed by Keisuke Goda's ImPACT program, to Deepcell (founded by my former PhD student Maddison Masaeli), and now through our work on nanovials (Joe de Rutte, Partillion Bioscience), which serve as test tubes for probing cell-cell communication. We are no longer limited to what a cell expresses in isolation, but can now ask how it behaves, who it talks to, and how it responds. Just as early flow cytometry revealed the immune system's complexity, these tools will help uncover the dynamic networks that govern multicellular biology, development, and disease. Providing the massive data needed to fuel predictive AI models that link cells to tissues to organisms—and perturbations that transform health to disease. 🔁 The future is moving beyond single-cell to interaction-level biology. And the tools are finally here. #CellBiology #SingleCell #ImageActivatedCellSorting #Nanovials #microfluidics #FlowCytometry #IACS #UCLA #Bioengineering #NatureBioengineering

𝟵𝟬% 𝗼𝗳 𝗱𝗿𝘂𝗴𝘀 𝗳𝗮𝗶𝗹 𝗰𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗮𝗹𝘀. Despite rigorous testing, the pharmaceutical industry continues to grapple with a high failure rate. It’s a decades old problem that persists. The disconnect between animal models and human biology has led to inefficiencies and ethical concerns. It’s a moral tug-of-war that once seemed unresolvable medical progress often came at the cost of animal welfare. More than 115 million animals are estimated to be used in drug testing globally each year. Shockingly, 95% of drugs shown to be safe and effective in animal tests fail in human trials. And nearly 99% of animals used in scientific experiments are not protected by federal animal welfare laws. 𝗦𝗼 𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝗱𝗼 𝘄𝗲 𝗱𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗽 𝘀𝗮𝗳𝗲, 𝗲𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗱𝗿𝘂𝗴𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗵𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗿𝗲𝗹𝘆𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝘃𝗶𝗹𝘆 𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗺𝗮𝗹 𝘁𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴? Scientists at Harvard University introduced a groundbreaking idea: creating replicas of human organs on tiny lab chips. Just as we’ve downsized from massive storage units to microchips in our devices, could we now miniaturize organs onto chips? I was thrilled to read about this development. I’ve often wondered about the moral cost of inducing disease in other living beings for the sake of our health. 𝗢𝗿𝗴𝗮𝗻𝘀-𝗼𝗻-𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗽𝘀 (𝗢𝗼𝗖𝘀) are essentially tiny 3D cell cultures that act as a bridge between traditional animal testing and the complexities of human biology. OoC models consist of miniature tissue systems grown within microfluidic chips, lined with living human cells. These chips simulate human physiology, enabling drug development, disease modelling, and personalized medicine. With OoCs, researchers can create more accurate and efficient models for testing human drugs reducing the likelihood of ineffective or harmful treatments. By mimicking a cell’s microenvironment on a chip, we can study genetic factors, explore new treatment avenues for complex conditions, and even address rare diseases with limited sample sizes. OoCs also enable biomaterial testing, helping evaluate the biocompatibility of materials used in medical devices. Recently, a firm called 𝗘𝗺𝘂𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲 tested a Liver-on-a-Chip device with 27 drugs that had passed animal trials but were toxic to humans. The chip accurately flagged 87% of these harmful compounds. I'm truly excited about the integration of tissue engineering and microfabrication to advance our understanding of human biology ethically and effectively. I hope to see a future where research and commercial applications in this space grow rapidly, helping us build a more humane and progressive health tech ecosystem one where millions of animals no longer have to suffer in the name of human progress. Watch this video by Harvard to learn more. #healthcare #technology #healthtech #innovation 

🚀 A Leap Forward in #Wearable Biosensing: Bioinspired #Sweat Monitoring for Multiday #Metabolic Analysis A new Science Magazine study introduces BMS3 — a bioinspired microfluidic sweat sensor that makes continuous, noninvasive biochemical monitoring a reality. 🌿 Nature-inspired engineering: • Lotus leaves & pitcher plants inspired Janus membranes + graded microchannels for efficient sweat harvesting and transport. 🧪 Breakthrough performance: • Sustains sweat collection for 48+ hours after just one brief iontophoresis session. • Tracks uric acid, xanthine, and alcohol — key markers for gout & metabolic health. 👩⚕️ Clinical validation: • Tested in both healthy participants and gout patients. • Differentiates normal vs. pathological states. • Provides real-time therapeutic feedback (e.g., allopurinol response). 💡 Why it matters: This bioinspired wearable overcomes longstanding challenges in sweat sensing and brings us closer to practical precision medicine — enabling clinicians and researchers to capture the body’s biochemical dynamics in real time, across daily life. 👏 Congratulations to Soyoung Shin, Ruixiao Liu, Yiran (Isabella) Yang, Ph.D., José A. Lasalde-Ramírez, Canran Wang, Zhaoping Li, MD, PhD, Wei Gao , and the entire Caltech team on this remarkable accomplishment! 📌 Read the full article here: https://lnkd.in/eQsxBU7j #WearableTechnology #Biosensors #PrecisionMedicine #DigitalHealth #MetabolicHealth #ClinicalResearch #BiomedicalEngineering

Just published today in issue 36 of the journal Advanced Functional Materials, our latest work on soft, skin-interfaced microfluidic devices for capture of sweat and in situ analysis of sweat biochemistry – sometimes referred to as ‘lab on the skin’ devices (https://lnkd.in/gQCZ5wje). This paper contains quite some substantial content, probably two or three papers-worth: (1) sophisticated multilayer, 3D designs in the microchannels, valves and reservoirs of these devices, to expand the dynamic range and sensitivity of colorimetric assays of sweat composition, (2) tailored surface chemistries and collection structures to greatly enhance the efficiency of sweat transport from the surface of the skin into the microfluidic systems, and (3) colorimetric reagents to allow quantitative evaluation of the concentrations of xanthine and creatinine in sweat, metabolic byproducts of caffeine and creatine, respectively.  The resulting devices work extremely well -- and they look super cool (not, by the way, an insignificant consideration!) More importantly, these advances are not just academic curiosities – they all have direct commercial relevance to product platforms (sold at millions of units) engineered by the team at Epicore Biosystems, a spinout from our group, with applications in sports, worker safety and medicine. Our goal here, as with many of our other projects, is to do science with potential for broader societal benefit! Thanks to all of the many co-authors on this expansive paper, but most significantly Da Som Y. (former postdoc, now on the faculty at Chung-Ang University), Mingyu Zhou (former undergraduate researcher and now PhD student in the group) and Shupeng Li (PhD student in Prof. Yonggang Huang group) for their combined leadership in experiment and theory; and to senior co-authors Dr. Alexander J. Aranyosi (scientist at Epicore Biosystems, for digital color extraction algorithms), Prof. Roozbeh Ghaffari (Research Associate Professor here, for overall input) and Prof. Yonggang Huang (long-time collaborator, for theory) for their guidance. Great work everyone -- glad to finally see this paper in the current issue of the journal!

A microfluidic transistor is a microvalve that can proportionally amplify a fluidic signal. It is my pleasure to present the first 3D printed (multimaterial) microfluidic transistor (and thus capable of amplification)! This has been a long collaboration with Mehmet Toner and Kaustav Gopinathan, MD PhD and the key contribution has been the invention of a novel SLA resin by Alireza Ahmadianyazdi, PhD that matches the Young's modulus and stretchability of PDMS to build the valve's membrane. For those into math, I hope you will enjoy the derivation of the flow vs pressure Q(P) relationship that predicts the flow limitation condition. We envision this will be the first step towards digitally manufacturing more sophisticated microfluidic logic automats. https://lnkd.in/gpAmpt5c

🔴 Researchers from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and the Georgia Institute of Technology present a massive breakthrough in thermal management in their Energy Conversion and Management paper, "Highly energy efficient manifold microchannel for cooling electronics with a coefficient of performance over 100,000". This research proves that embedded microfluidics will redefine the future of #AdvancedPackaging and #ElectronicsCooling. 1️⃣ The Thermal Bottleneck: #ThermalManagement & #LiquidCooling As the die-level heat flux of advanced electronics surpasses 1,000 W/cm², conventional cooling methods are hitting a physical wall. While embedding microfluidic cooling devices directly into the semiconductor substrate is a highly promising solution, traditional designs suffer from excessive pressure drops and nonuniform temperature distributions across the chip, which severely reduce device reliability. 2️⃣ Manifold Microchannel Architecture: #Microfluidics & #HeatDissipation To overcome this critical barrier, the research team developed and experimentally demonstrated a highly energy-efficient manifold microfluidic cooler. This architecture intelligently addresses the flow distribution and pressure drop issues that plague standard microchannel heat sinks. 3️⃣ Record-Breaking Efficiency: #EnergyEfficiency & #Hardware The hardware performance of this new design is staggering. The manifold microchannel was proven to successfully dissipate extreme die-level heat fluxes exceeding 2,000 W/cm². More importantly, it achieved this milestone with a coefficient of performance of over 100,000, representing a massive leap forward in cooling energy efficiency. 💡 My Take: The thermal wall is arguably the most critical threat to the scaling of 3D advanced packaging and AI accelerators. We can design the densest hybrid bonding interfaces and glass substrates imaginable, but if we cannot effectively remove the localized heat without a massive pumping power overhead, the architecture fails. Achieving a coefficient of performance of over 100,000 means we can extract extreme heat without dedicating absurd amounts of energy just to circulate the coolant. This caliber of thermal innovation demonstrates exactly the kind of cross-disciplinary hardware solutions needed to keep the next generation of semiconductor architectures from literally melting down. 👇 Link in the comments #AdvancedPackaging #ThermalManagement #LiquidCooling #Microfluidics #ElectronicsCooling #AIHardware #HeatDissipation #DataCenter #SemiconductorManufacturing TSMC Intel NVIDIA Broadcom Marvell Technology ASE Group Amkor Technology, Inc. Applied Materials ASML CoolIT Systems Vertiv Schneider Electric

What drives innovation better than the freedom to play? 🧪✨ Many breakthroughs have come from technologies that enabled play by making systems programmable, editable, or manufacturable on demand. Transistors made electronics programmable, CRISPR made genetic engineering accessible, and 3D printers democratized fabrication. Yet in microfluidics, experiments are still constrained by rigid, unconfigurable setups that restrict real time exploration through trial and error. Can we change that? My lab has long been intrigued by the idea of replacing physical walls with reconfigurable force fields (I’ve shared a bit more on the history of this in the comments 👇), and it's always exciting to see new ideas and approaches in this field. In a fascinating new paper just published in #NaturePhotonics by a team from Romain Quidant's group at ETH Zürich, the authors demonstrate a "microfluidic playground" where fluid flow is controlled by light. By projecting structured light onto walls coated with gold nanorods, they created "virtual boundaries" made of heat. This allows them to steer, merge, and split fluid streams in real-time, just by changing the image projected on the device. It was a pleasure to write the News & Views piece for this article with Jonathan Ericson. We see this work as a beautiful example of how photonic degrees of freedom can be translated into fluidic control, opening the door to new functionality at the microscale. Congratulations to the authors on this innovative work! Read our full commentary here: https://lnkd.in/edm4xi9y, and the original research paper by Falko Schmidt and colleagues here: https://lnkd.in/eynq9kkB #Microfluidics #Optofluidics #BercoviciLab