Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck
Doctors and engineers at UCLA have developed a new device that could help them study how diseases develop by making it possible to inject large particles into cells at high speed, allowing them to capture higher-quality images inside the fundamental biological units.
The tool, which the researchers believe could lead to new breakthroughs in medical research, is described as a highly-efficient automated device that delivers cargo such as antibodies, bacteria, nanoparticles and enzymes into mammalian cells at a rate of 100,000 cells per minute (compared to a rate of just one cell per minute for currently available technology).
Turning up medical research to full BLAST
Eric Pei-Yu Chiou, an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering and of bioengineering at the university’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science and lead author of a new study published online this week in the journal Nature Methods, and colleagues from the engineering school and the David Geffen School of Medicine, created the device – which they have dubbed a biophotonic laser-assisted surgery tool (BLAST).
Unlike currently available methods to deliver particles up to one micrometer in size into cells, which are slower and involves the use of syringe-like tools, BLAST is a silicon chip that has a series of micrometer-wide holes, each of which surrounded by an asymmetric and semicircular coating of titanium. Beneath those holes is a liquid that contains the particles to be delivered.
The UCLA team explains that the titanium coating of the chip is heated, which boils the water layer adjacent to parts of the cell and creates a bubble that bursts near the cell membrane. This produces a large, quick fissure reaction that allows the particle-filled liquid underneath the cells to be inserted into them before the membrane reseals. The entire silicon chip can be scanned by lasers in about 10 seconds, allowing for a near-instantaneous and precise insertion.
Using the device to study mitochondrial mutations, pathogens
Using BLAST’s ability to insert large cargo into cells could ultimately result in scientific and medical advances that were not previously possible. For instance, gaining the ability to deliver mitochondria could alter a cell’s metabolism, allowing researchers to study diseases caused by mutations in mitochondrial DNA. It could also let researchers analyze the how genes involved in the lifecycle of invasive pathogens function, and how the cell defends against them.
The device can reportedly deliver cargo to 100,000 cells at once, and co-author Dr. Michael Teitell, head of the division of pediatric and developmental pathology, said that the “new information learned from these types of studies could assist in identifying pathogen targets for drug development, or provide fundamental insight on how the pathogen-host interaction enables a productive infection or effective cellular response to occur.”
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