(610b) Cell As an Optical Lens: Application to New Class of Chemical Cytometry (Faculty Candidate)

Immune heterogeneities of cells are critically involved in progression and prevention of cardiovascular or neurodegenerative diseases. Thus, a tool that enable the profiling of dynamic antigenic responses of different immune cell populations in terms of expression of chemical efflux and biophysical cell properties could aid in our understanding of past and future unknown microorganisms and diseases. Herein, we developed a new class of chemical cytometry technique that can monitor the multimodal immune cell heterogeneities in real-time. By integrating fluorescent nanosensors with microfluidics, dual functional platform that can directly visualize the target cells and also report their real-time chemical efflux could be efficiently realized. Using the unique nIR lensing effect of cell, both H₂O₂ secretion of the cells and their biophysical information were easily extracted in same time without any labeling and additional optical tools. Instantaneous H₂O₂ efflux of cells could be directly monitored in few 10^-18 moles resolution by just measuring nIR signals from the platform. For final applications, immune response heterogeneities of different monocytes populations were clearly profiled with high-throughput microfluidic system (~10 cell/min) in non-destructive way. Furthermore, new phenotype correlations between real-time extracellular immune responses and multiple biophysical properties (cell size, eccentricity, RI) of monocyte populations were investigated with exact numerical values and distribution statistics. This is first trial to bridge nanosensors and cytometry for cell monitoring and expected to be used for ideal single cell analysis platform in cell manufacturing and biopharmaceutical industry.