A microfluidic mammalian cell sorter based on fluorescence detection

Abstract

We report on the development of microfluidic devices for single mammalian cell sorting and manipulation. These microfluidic devices are fabricated out of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) by multilayer soft lithography. They consist of several active units (mixer, pumps) pneumatically actuated by monolithic soft microvalves. Using this fabrication method we were able to develop a microfluidic device for the fast sorting of 10 μm diameter fluorescently tagged rare objects (mammalian cells or beads) sparsely distributed within a concentrated solution of non-tagged objects. We show that once sorted, these objects can be individually recovered in a small volume (nanolitre range) for further biochemical assays such as cell lysis, mRNA extraction and polymerase chain reaction. © 2004 Published by Elsevier B.V.