Cell Analysis on Microfluidics Combined with Mass Spectrometry

Abstract

Cell analysis is of great significance for the exploration of human diseases and health. However, there are not many techniques for high-throughput cell analysis in the simulated cell microenvironment. The high designability of the microfluidic chip enables multiple kinds of cells to be co-cultured on the chip, with other functions such as sample preprocessing and cell manipulation. Mass spectrometer (MS) can detect a large number of biomolecules without labelling. Therefore, microfluidic chip coupled with MS has been a major branch of cell analysis during the past decades. Here, we concisely introduce various microfluidic devices coupling with MS used for cell analysis. The main functions of microfluidic devices were first described, followed with different interfaces to different types of MS. Then, their various applications in cell analysis were highlighted, with an emphasis on cell metabolism, drug screening, and signal transduction. Current limitations and prospective trends of microfluidics coupling with MS are discussed at the end.

Neurotoxicity mechanism of aconitine in HT22 cells studied by microfluidic chip-mass spectrometry

“…It is suggested that the Chip-MS device can be developed to be more portable, and the cell culture assembly for well culturing needs optimizing. Furthermore, chips with more advanced functions connected to MS, such as organ or single cell on chip, can provide a powerful mode for mimicking drug metabolism, cytotoxicity assessment, disease diagnosis, and gene analysis, which deserves more attention in future development [ 41 , 42 ].…”

Recent advances of integrated microfluidic suspension cell culture system

“…cell seeding, incubation and automated analysis) is envisioned to develop as an effective clinical diagnostic point-ofcare device to meet the requirements of lower sample consumption, higher efficiency and detection sensitivity for clinical tests. Recently, chip-mass spectrometry (Chip-MS) has been used for clinical cell-based analysis, it can also facilitate the studies of microbial metabolism, treatment of diseases and drug screening to characterize the wide range of molecules from different metabolism activities [100,184]. Although lots of microfluidic devices have been developed, there are major hurdles in the microfluidic design for cell analysis in a more biomimetic microenvironment since the minor difference in microenvironments of cells can influence their phenotypes.…”

Pollution-Free and Highly Sensitive Lactate Detection in Cell Culture Based on a Microfluidic Chip

“…The analysis of cellular metabolites plays a critical role in disease diagnosis [3][4][5] and drug development [6][7][8]. There have been ever-increasing research efforts in this field [9][10][11][12][13][14]. Among these metabolites, lactate is the main product of anaerobic metabolism.…”