Super-biochip
Americans have made a biochip for screening thousands of compounds in vivo
American scientists have developed a microfluidic biochip for parallel screening of thousands of chemical compounds in vivo. The results of the study are presented in Nature Communication (Mondal et al., Large-scale microfluidics providing high-resolution and high-throughput screening of Caenorhabditis elegans poly-glutamine aggregation model).
Traditional biochips are a matrix for parallel analysis of various biostructures. Now such devices allow to study the molecular reactions of only a few organisms at the same time, while studies are usually carried out in vitro – "in vitro". Such experiments are more budget–friendly, but are considered less reliable than in vivo - that is, conducted on a living organism.
In the new work, scientists have created a facility for parallel fluorescent screening of thousands of compounds in the framework of complex modeling of organisms. The device is a microfluidic biochip made of an elastic polymer, which contains 96 cone-shaped shafts to accommodate animals treated with the drug. The mines are connected to microchannels and are designed, for example, for roundworms, which are widely used in biomodeling.
Drawing from an article in Nature Communication
As part of the tests, the authors used the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans for this. 40 individuals were placed in each shaft, which were compressed under the pressure of the channel walls, which simplified visualization. Then the biochip was placed on a sealer, which immobilized the animals. The installation made it possible to simultaneously analyze the reactions of 3.6 thousand worms to almost a thousand FDA-approved active substances within 12-16 minutes. During this time, conventional biochips check one connection.
According to scientists, the device will help speed up and improve the efficiency of biomodeling, in particular, neurodegenerative diseases. During the tests, they analyzed about a thousand drugs on C.elegans designed to prevent protein aggregation associated with the development of Huntington's disease. To their surprise, the authors found the compound most effective for these purposes – it is contained in four preparations.
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18.10.2016