Authors: Hyunwoo Bang Won Gu Lee Hoyoung Yun Chanil Chung Jun Keun Chang DongChul Han
Publish Date: 2008/01/22
Volume: 14, Issue: 6, Pages: 719-724
Abstract
Today’s pharmaceutical industry is facing several challenges resulting from a vastly increasing number of samples through a highthroughput screening In addition the increased demand for cytotoxicity tests have caused bottlenecks which in turn is causing serious problems Here we present a novel approach to performing the cytotoxicity test This new method uses a directly stackable microsystem on the cultured cells It also enables us to perform cytotoxicity tests with more reliability by providing exactly the same cellculture environment for all experiments The new approach consists of two fascinating modules First a serial dilution module can linearly dilute one drug solution into several diluted ones in a serial manner and equally distribute them into independent microchambers Secondly a microcompartment module can firmly attach itself onto any cultured cells and divide the directlycovered cell surface into multiple welltype microchambers instantaneously This microsystem has a strong feasible advantage It hardly needs to modify the established cell culture protocols and at the same time it can eliminate some repetitive and laborious processes A quick flexible integrated microsystem would reduce many redundant efforts during onchip cytotoxicity testsThis research has been supported by the Intelligent Microsystem Center IMC http//wwwmicrosystemrekr which carries out one of the 21st century’s Frontier RD Projects sponsored by the Korea Ministry of Commerce Industry and Energy and was supported in part by the Brain Korea 21 Project in 2006
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