Single Cell Gene Therapy by Nano-Electroporation Technique

Abstract:
One of the cutting-edge multidisciplinary research themes in MEMS / Micro-nano-fabrication is to design and manufacture advanced BioMEMS device for life science, ranging from in vitro cell biology toward in vivo medicine. In recent years, nanotechnologies have facilitated the development of bio-chips and devices which have demonstrated unprecedented capabilities in single cell analysis and manipulation. In this talk, a novel nano-biotechnology, nano-electroporation (NEP), is introduced with emphasis on high-throughput, and precisely delivery of gene / drugs into living cells at single-cell resolution. Cleanroom micro-/nano-fabrication techniques are involved in fabrication of the nano-chip. Micro-manipulation techniques, including magnetic tweezers, di-electrophoresis (DEP) and microfluidics, are invented to precisely control and capture cells on the chip for localized gene transfection.

The in vitro applications of the NEP platform have been demonstrated in the studies of intracellular cancer biomarker detection in leukemic cells, cardiomyocytes, T lymphocytes and glioma stem cells. Our latest efforts have achieved in vivo cell reprogramming for on-body gene therapy and wound healing. The future research of this nano-technique for flexible wearable drug delivery platform with the aims to patient-specific gene therapy and regenerative medicine are discussed.