When cells hit the wall: Engineers put the squeeze on cells to diagnose disease
Tuesday, May 1, 2012 - 21:30
in Physics & Chemistry
Bioengineering researchers have taken advantage of cell physical properties for the development of a new instrument that slams cells against a wall of fluid and quickly analyzes the physical response, allowing identification of cancer and other cell states without chemical tags. The deformability cytometer consists of a miniaturized microfluidic chip that sequentially aligns cells so that they hit a wall of fluid at rates of thousands per second.