Good news! From Petri dish to microwells to nanovials! This could be a game changer!
"For nearly 40 years, drugmakers have used genetically engineered cells as tiny drug factories. Such cells can be programmed to secrete compounds that yield drugs used to treat cancer and autoimmune conditions such as arthritis. ...
The technology could also advance basic biological research. ...
The more common technique uses a grid of tiny plastic containers called a microwell plate, but that approach lacks the nanovial’s ability to sort single cells, and the current technology typically requires weeks for enough cells to grow so that secretions can be detected. The other alternative is a multimillion-dollar instrument, found in only a few dozen labs worldwide, that measures the secretions of about 10,000 cells per experiment and can sort live cells.
Compared to that instrument, nanovials can be used to perform much larger screenings — in the millions of cells — at a small fraction of the relative cost — less than one cent per cell, versus $1 or more per cell using the current standard. ..."From the abstract:
"Techniques to analyze and sort single cells based on functional outputs, such as secreted products, have the potential to transform our understanding of cellular biology as well as accelerate the development of next-generation cell and antibody therapies. However, secreted molecules rapidly diffuse away from cells, and analysis of these products requires specialized equipment and expertise to compartmentalize individual cells and capture their secretions. Herein, we describe methods to fabricate hydrogel-based chemically functionalized microcontainers, which we call nanovials, and demonstrate their use for sorting single viable cells based on their secreted products at high-throughput using only commonly accessible laboratory infrastructure. These nanovials act as solid supports that facilitate attachment of a variety of adherent and suspension cell types, partition uniform aqueous compartments, and capture secreted proteins. Solutions can be exchanged around nanovials to perform fluorescence immunoassays on secreted proteins. Using this platform and commercial flow sorters, we demonstrate high-throughput screening of stably and transiently transfected producer cells based on relative IgG production. ... The reported nanovials can be easily stored and distributed among researchers, democratizing access to high-throughput functional cell screening."
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