Microfluidic cell dispensing platform
AssigneeHewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.
InventorsViktor Shkolnikov, Alexander Govyadinov
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Abstract
Microfluidic systems are provided for the detection and analysis of cell systems that can include a set of reservoirs, the set of reservoirs including a reagent reservoir and an immiscible fluid reservoir, an incubation region having an inlet and an outlet, a set of independent fluidic networks, the set of independent fluidic networks including a first fluidic network and a second fluidic network that is not fluidically connected to the first fluidic network, wherein the first fluidic network (1) is fed by the set of reservoirs, (2) includes a droplet generator, and (3) connects to the inlet of the incubation region, and wherein the second fluidic network is connected to the outlet of the incubation region.
Claims20
A microfluidic system comprising:
- a set of reservoirs, the set of reservoirs comprising a reagent reservoir and an immiscible fluid reservoir;
- an incubation region having an inlet and an outlet;
- a set of independent fluidic networks, the set of independent fluidic networks comprising a first fluidic network and a second fluidic network that is not fluidically connected to the first fluidic network,
- wherein the first fluidic network (1) is fed by the set of reservoirs, (2) comprises a droplet generator, and (3) connects to the inlet of the incubation region, and
- wherein the second fluidic network is connected to the outlet of the incubation region.
A method for selecting cells producing a specific product using a microfluidic device, the method comprising:
- packaging, into droplets, via a first fluidic network of the microfluidic device, cells that are in a cell suspension, wherein the cells are packaged into the droplets such that each droplet includes (1) no more than one cell from the cell suspension, and (2) one or more reagents from one or more reagent reservoirs of the microfluidic device;
- ejecting droplets into an incubation region of the microfluidic device;
- incubating the droplets in the incubation region at a temperature and for a period of time;
- pulling incubated droplets from the incubation region into a second fluidic network of the microfluidic device;
- detecting a desired product in a subset of the incubated droplets pulled from the incubation region;
- and
- sorting the incubated droplets based on whether the desired product is detected in the incubated droplets.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.