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Open seminars

Speaker1 : Chief Scientist Hidenori Otsuka (National Institute for Materials Science)
Subject1 : Control of interfacial nano structure and spheroid array
Speaker2 : Associate professor Masaharu Takeuchi (Institute of Industrial Science University of Tokyo)
Subject2 : Bio hybrid system
Speaker3 : Dr. Sander Koster (Institute of Microtechnology, University of Neuchatel)
Subject3 : Microfluidics : new tools to study the response of cells to chemicals
Date : March 3, 2004 (Seminar room 2, Faculty of Engineering bldg.2, Hongo campus)
Abstract : The first part of the talk will deal with a general overview of the microTAS activities performed at the Institute of Microtechnology. These activities include the use of trapped freely moving beads in recirculating flows, heterogeneous immunoassays, on-chip heating/cooling and contactless conductivity detection. In the second part of the talk a novel method is presented where living nerve cells are cultured in a cultivation chamber. The goal is to use drugs to stimulate individual groups of living cells, arranged in an nxm array on a surface. Such experiments are increasingly important in applications where a large number of analyses are required, such as drug discovery, environmental monitoring and neural computing. A microfluidic system containing a 50-µL chamber etched in silicon with KOH is presented for the cultivation of living cells. Nutrients are introduced through a 1-mm ultrasonically drilled hole in the Pyrex cover-plate to keep the nerve cells alive. A novel concept for the delivery of drugs to cells is presented, where drugs will be delivered to the cells through 20-µm holes drilled with an excimer laser in the same Pyrex coverplate. The holes are connected with a microfluidic network of channels through which drugs can be pumped individually, as has been demonstrated with slime mold (Physarum polycephalum), a multi-nucleated single cell, that was grown in the flow cell. Ethanol was delivered in a spatially resolved manner to the growing slime mold affecting the viability of only part of the organism.

Contact address
Institute of Industrial Science
Teruo Fujii
Tel: +81 3 5452 6211
e-mail: tfujii@iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp

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