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Leon LiEducationMaster of Science, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT 2008 ResearchThe task of identifying and quantifying the cell culture proteome from cell lysate or the secreted proteins is often performed by the immunoassay. Macroscale immunoassays such as those performed on the tissue culture plate, however, are of limited use for the microfluidic cell culture due to the limited volume of sample generated by the microfluidic culture. The ability to precisely patterning cells on the microscale (10-100um) enables cell study at physiological length scales, but also drastically reduces both the sample volume and the protein abundance when compared to the tissue culture plate. Due to these twin challenges of low sample volume and low secreted protein concentration, the detection of protein antigens by immunoassay on many microfluidic cell cultures applications is currently practically infeasible. During my PhD research, I am working on novel microfluidic methods of improving the sensitivity and time response of immunoassays. To address the limitations of low sample volume and low protein concentration, we have developed a novel microscale immunoassay device capable of the electrokinetic concentration of proteins. This technique allows us to improve the sensitivity of immunoassays through increasing the antigen concentration prior to antibody-antigen binding, or preconcentration. Using this scheme, we have demonstrated several hundred fold sensitivity improvement for the detection of protein antigens directly from cell media without sample preparation. PublicationsKim S.J., Li L., Han J., ” Amplified Electrokinetic Response by Concentration Polarization near Nanofluidic Channel,” Langmuir 2009 |
