SEMINAR 2024

Abstract

Digital microfluidics (DMF) is a cutting-edge technology for manipulating individual droplets on-chip based on the phenomenon of electro-wetting on dielectric. The utilization of electric signal for droplet control in DMF eliminates the bulky external pumps and valves in traditional channel-based microfluidics, making DMF an ideal system for point-of-care disease diagnosis. In this talk, I will introduce our recent progress in the development of digital microfluidics and its application in precision medicine, including the ultrafast DNA amplification on-chip, single-cell drug screening, wide-ranged flexible sample delivery on-chip controlled with external electric signal, and single or combinational multiple drug screening on-chip etc. We also built a portable DMF device for primary tumor cell drug screening. The in-vitro drug screening results for instructing precision medicine have been validated in breast cancers in xenograft mice and clinical liver cancers with in-vivo tumor suppression treated by effective drugs on primary tumor cells screened on-chip. All these investigations have paved the way for automatic digital microfluidic systems for precision medicine in the future.