Micro
Microscopy shows life at the micro scale. Smart microfluidics changes what you can do with it.
We combine advanced control systems, machine vision and microfluidics to meet critical needs in bioanalysis and regenerative medicine — integrated cell culturing, analysis and isolation using action-at-a-distance electric, fluidic and magnetic fields on chip.
Why microfluidics?
Combined, these technologies are expected to yield a gentle cell sorting platform for a fraction of the cost of current sorters of choice — without the shear and stress that conventional sorting imposes on living cells.
Microscale sorting using light
We are developing instrumentation for high-resolution screening and sorting of biological moieties at the microscale — biological cells and small live organisms such as C. elegans and zebrafish embryos, used widely in hematology, cardiology and neurology research and in drug discovery.
The platform is designed to fit standard laboratory microscopes. The critical need is a simple yet elegant sorting mechanism, and our approach is based on the use of light.
Specimen mounting for light-sheet microscopy
Light-sheet microscopy has become essential in developmental biology, cell biology, systems biology and oncology. Dual-View Inverted Selective Plane Illumination Microscopy (diSPIM) enables damage-free, long-term optical imaging of many neurons at once in developing animals.
ACUITYnano is developing a droplet-based specimen mounting system using droplet microfluidics and thermalization tailored to diSPIM. It gently immobilizes multiple developing C. elegans with obstruction-free visual access, enabling long-term brain circuit imaging at single-cell resolution while perturbing natural physiology to an absolute minimum.
Nematode analysis and sorting platform
An integrated screening and sorting platform for nematodes, bringing automated handling, imaging and phenotype-based selection to labs that today rely on manual picking.