Issue 8, 2021

Isolation and recovery of extracellular vesicles using optically-induced dielectrophoresis on an integrated microfluidic platform

Abstract

Cell-released, membrane-encapsulated extracellular vesicles (EVs) serve as a means of intercellular communication by delivering bioactive cargos including proteins, nucleic acids and lipids. EVs have been widely used for a variety of biomedical applications such as biomarkers for disease diagnosis and drug delivery vehicles for therapy. Herein, this study reports a novel method for label-free, contact-free isolation and recovery of EVs via optically-induced dielectrophoresis (ODEP) on a pneumatically-driven microfluidic platform with minimal human intervention. At an optimal driving frequency of 20 kHz and a voltage of 20 Vpp, an ODEP force from a 75 μm moving light beam was characterized to be 23.5–97.7 fN in 0.2 M sucrose solution. Furthermore, rapid enrichment of EVs with a small volume of only 27 pL in 32 s achieved an increase of 272-fold by dynamically shrinking circular light patterns. Moreover, EVs could be automatically isolated and recovered within 25 min, while achieving a releasing efficiency of 99.8% and a recovery rate of 52.2% by using an integrated microfluidics-based optically-induced EV isolation (OIEV) platform. Given the capacity of label-free, contact-free EV isolation, and automatic, easy-releasing EV recovery, this integrated OIEV platform provides a unique approach for EV-based disease diagnosis and drug delivery applications.

Graphical abstract: Isolation and recovery of extracellular vesicles using optically-induced dielectrophoresis on an integrated microfluidic platform

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
05 Feb 2021
Accepted
12 Mar 2021
First published
15 Mar 2021

Lab Chip, 2021,21, 1475-1483

Isolation and recovery of extracellular vesicles using optically-induced dielectrophoresis on an integrated microfluidic platform

Y. Chen, C. P. Lai, C. Chen and G. Lee, Lab Chip, 2021, 21, 1475 DOI: 10.1039/D1LC00093D

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