Cells-in-drops · High throughput screening of single-cells using droplet microfluidics

High throughput screening of single-cells using droplet microfluidics

Single-cell profiling has gained considerable attention in the past few years triggering significant efforts to develop various analytical techniques to isolate, amplify and sequence the genetic material of single-cells. Despite a great progress in this field, one major limitation remains a challenge – the throughput. Using state-of-the-art technologies such as commercial microfluidic devices or FACS sorting into microtiter plates, a few hundreds to a thousand of cells can be isolated and sequenced. Although these numbers are impressive, they are not sufficient for extensive analysis of heterogeneous cell populations. For example, a tumor is comprised of many cell types and thorough analysis requires sequencing of core biopsies that typically yield ~10.000 single-cells. Extensive single-cell analysis is also required to study the immune response, in which many different cells work in a highly coordinated fashion to fight infection and clear damaged, and diseased cells. In addition, accumulative evidence suggests that rare cell types (or sub-groups of cells) constituting only a small fraction of a population can drive the collective response of an entire population. While working as a post-doctoral researcher at Harvard University, the fellow and co-workers has developed powerful droplet-based approach for single-cell RNA-Seq [Klein*, Mazutis* et a., Cell, 2015, * -equal contribution]. This method, dubbed as inDrops (for indexing Droplets), makes use of droplet microfluidic technology to index individual cells at a rate of >10,000 cells/hour in nanolitre-scale droplets. The goal of this project was to implement the reported high-end technology at the host institution (Vilnius University, Lithuania), and apply it for high-throughput immune cell transcriptional profiling.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз