Abstract
In the research on the tumor, it is know that the interactions between tumor cells and stromal cells are strongly associated with growth, invasion and metastasis of cancer. This study aims to develope a new method based on the technoliqes on gene expression analysis and microfluidics to intestigate those interactions. We focus on the techniques of droplet formation and manipulation to analyze the cell clusters. A target cell cluster and a barcode bead are encapsulated into a small droplet by using a simple microfluidic device and some fundamental techniques on droplet formation and manipulation. So far, we have performed some preliminary experiments and succeeded in developing a prototype of the droplet-formation module and generating the cell cluster droplets in the module. Also, we have already tried the gene expression analysis using those cell cluster droplets. In the near future, we are planning to add to the device a filtering module which can separate the target cell clusters from the other single cells to reduce the noise in analysis.
Schematic design of droplet formation module
Cluster droplets