MicroSinCell: Development of microfluidic platform for single cell studies

Project funded by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P. (FCT) (Projetos de Investigação Científica e Desenvolvimento Tecnológico - 2012), grant PTDC/BBB-IMG/1225/2012. Funded amount: EUR 162,748, as stated by the source. Runs 2013-06-01 to 2015-10-31. Keywords: microfluidic, quantum dots, single cell analysis, microimagem, Engineering and technology, Engineering and technology/Industrial biotechnology. Source: OpenAIRE Graph, from the funder's project data (collected by OpenAIRE on 2025-07-20); national funding data, not CORDIS; selected because its keywords name quantum. Abstract given by the source: Microfluidics, the study and control of the fluidic behavior in microstructures, has emerged as an important enabling tool for single-cell chemical analysis. The complex procedures for chemical cytometry experiments can be integrated into a single microfabricated device. The capability of handling a volume of liquid as small as picoliters can be utilized to manipulate cells, perform controlled chemical reactions, and efficiently minimize sample dilution after lysis. The microfluidic approach offers a rapid, accurate, and cost-effective tool for single-cell biology. In a way to explore the advantages of this microenvironment for analysis of few to single cells it is proposed to develop a microfluidic setup system based on a microfabricated chip with cell trapping arrangements, connected to different inlets/outlets that feed specific reagents/growing media/activators/labels/cytotoxic etc. This will overcome the limitation of the static approach, also it will allow the experiment to be performed with very small quantities of reagents and cells, and will enable the obtention of images (even fluorescent microscopy) in real time of the cells in each experimental step. The microfluidic chamber will be used for exploring the interaction of the animal or plant cells with specific agents (parasites) or labeled biomolecules, allowing an individualized characterization of the reaction. An experimental microcell chamber, for cell sizes ranging from 5 to 100 um, thermostatised, with influx of media and reagents by pneumatic controlled system, mounted onto an inverted microscope will be developed and applied to the assay with living cells. The ability to handling an extremely small volume of liquid containing cells or reagents, typically in the range of picoliters to nanoliters, will allow a large control of the process inside the cell, playing with the different in- and outlets flows that affect the trapped cells. A 6 channel microfluidic chip will be constructed by soft [shortened; the full text is on the OpenAIRE page]

Original source.

Source: OpenAIRE Graph: projects of national funders, OpenAIRE, from the project data of Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P. (FCT). Retrieved 2026-10-28. Licence: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (OpenAIRE Graph). Selected metadata, adapted presentation; the publisher's record is authoritative. No endorsement by the source is implied. Licence: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0).

AI-assisted summary: The MicroSinCell project, funded by FCT with EUR 162,748, ran from June 1, 2013, to October 31, 2015. It focused on developing a microfluidic platform for single-cell analysis, integrating complex chemical procedures into a microfabricated device. Suggested technology pillar: enabling. Generated by AI from the public source text; it may contain errors and the original source is authoritative.