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Working closely with Dr. Jochen Guck and his team from the Cavendish Laboratory Dolomite developed a multi-layered glass microfluidic chip featuring 3 inlets.
Its unique design integrates both fluidic and optical fibre channels allowing the chip to be used as a two beam laser optical trap for cell mechanical measurements.
One of the fabrication challenges was to ensure the optical fibres were aligned to micron accuracy so that the two laser beams met in a microchannel allowing the cells to be captured.
After aligning, the fluid-borne cells are exposed to laser beams, which stretch them to probe their elasticity. Thus, cancerous cells, for example, can be detected as they are softer than healthy cells.
The optical stretcher offers a very cost effective and time efficient solution which compares favourably to traditional methods used to measure cell mechanics.
For more information on Dr. Jochen Guck and the Cavendish Laboratory,
please visit www.phy.cam.ac.uk
Click here to read more on Dolomite's custom device expertise.
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