The early detection of disease is critical to providing life-saving, therapeutic intervention. However, traditional methods for detection (e.g., tissue biopsy, endoscopy and medical imaging) can suffer from an elevated risk of complication, especially in elderly patients, and insufficient resolution to provide clear diagnoses. As such, many are looking toward “liquid biopsies” for clues into presence and status of different diseases due to its minimal invasiveness and ability to provide rich information about the native tumor or wound physiology. A critical first step in performing these analyses is the separation, enrichment and/or isolation of target biomarkers. In this talk, I will provide an overview of the new and exciting ways that elastomeric particles can accomplish this task via acoustically powered microfluidic (i.e., acoustofluidic) devices. Due to their low stiffness and density, elastomeric particles have negative acoustic contrast factors (<i>Φ</i>) in aqueous solutions, which allows them to focus along the antinodes of acoustic standing waves. In contrast, cells focus to the pressure node(s)<i>. </i>Leveraging this disparity, I will describe two strategies to isolate specific biomarkers from non-target constituents in acoustofluidic devices. First, I will describe how elastomeric particles made from silicone monomers can be conjugated with biospecific antibodies to capture and isolate leukemia cells in acoustofluidic devices. Second, I will describe a strategy to modify the surfaces of elastomeric particles with genetically engineered polypeptides (i.e., elastin-like polypeptides), which display lower critical solution temperature (LCST) phase behavior, to capture and acoustically isolate small molecules from blood. Together, these strategies provide a rapid, robust and gentle approach to continuously isolate rare biomarkers from inhomogeneous solutions in a convenient microchip device.

Elastomeric particles for cell and biomarker isolation in acoustofluidic devices

256th National Meeting (2018)

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