Sun Hee Lim

We have developed a microchip for polymerase chain reaction (PCR) with polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). PDMS has good characteristics: it is cheap, transparent, easy to fabricate and biocompatible. But in micro PCR, the porosity of PDMS causes several critical problems such as bubble formation, sample evaporation and protein adsorption. To solve those problems, we coated the micro PCR chips with Parylene film, which has low permeability to moisture and long-term stability. We investigated the influence of low thermal conductivity of PDMS and Parylene on the thermal characteristics of the PCR chips with numerical analysis. The thermal responses of micro PCR chips were compared for three materials: silicon, glass and PDMS. From the results, we identified appropriate thermal responses of the PDMS-based micro PCR chips by heating both the top and bottom sides. We could successfully amplify the angiotensin converting enzyme gene with as small a volume as 2 μl on the PDMS-based micro PCR chips without any additives.

Transfection of DNA molecules into mammalian cells with electric pulsations, which is so-called electroporation, is a powerful and widely used method that can be directly applied to gene therapy. However, very little is known about the basic mechanisms of DNA transfer and cell response to the electric pulse. We developed a microelectroporation chip with poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) to investigate the mechanism of electroporation as a first step of DNA transfer and to introduce the benefits of miniaturization into the genetic manipulation. The microelectroporation chip has a microchannel with a height of 20 microm and a length of 2 cm. Owing to the transparency of PDMS, we could in situ observe the uptake process of propidium iodide (PI) into SK-OV-3 cells, which shows promise in visualization of gene delivery in living cells. We also noticed the geometric effect on the degree of electroporation in microchannels with diverse channel width. This experimental result shows that the geometry can be another parameter to be considered for the electroporation when it is performed in microchannels with an exponential decaying pulse generator. Cell culturing is possible within the microelectroporation chip, and we also successfully transfected SK-OV-3 cells with enhanced green fluorescent protein genes, which demonstrates the feasibility of the microelectroporation chip in genetic manipulation.

Today's pharmaceutical industry is facing challenges resulting from the vast increases in sample numbers produced by high-throughput screening (HTS). In addition, the bottlenecks created by increased demand for cytotoxicity testing (required to assess compound safety) are becoming a serious problem. We have developed a polymer PDMS (polydimethylsiloxane) based microfluidic device that can perform a cytotoxicity test in a rapid and reproducible manner. The concept that the device includes is well adjustable to automated robots in huge HTS systems, so we can think of it as a potential dilution and delivery module. Cytotoxicity testing is all about the dilution and dispensing of a drug sample. Previously, we made a PDMS based microfluidic device which automatically and precisely diluted drugs with a buffer solution with serially increasing concentrations. This time, the serially diluted drug solution was directly delivered to 96 well plates for cytotoxicity testing. Cytotoxic paclitaxel solution with 2% RPMI 1640 has been used while carrying out cancerous cell based cytotoxicity tests. We believe that this rapid and robust use of the PDMS microchip will overcome the growing problem in cytotoxicity testing for HTS.

Since its first report in the Middle East in 2012, the Middle East respiratory syndrome-coronavirus (MERS-CoV) has become a global concern due to the high morbidity and mortality of individuals infected with the virus. Although the majority of MERS-CoV cases have been reported in Saudi Arabia, the overall risk in areas outside the Middle East remains significant as inside Saudi Arabia. Additional pandemics of MERS-CoV are expected, and thus novel tools and reagents for therapy and diagnosis are urgently needed. Here, we used phage display to develop novel monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) that target MERS-CoV. A human Fab phage display library was panned against the S2 subunit of the MERS-CoV spike protein (MERS-S2P), yielding three unique Fabs (S2A3, S2A6, and S2D5). The Fabs had moderate apparent affinities (Half maximal effective concentration (EC50 = 123–421 nM) for MERS-S2P, showed no cross-reactivity to spike proteins from other CoVs, and were non-aggregating and thermostable (Tm = 61.5–80.4 °C). Reformatting the Fabs into IgGs (Immunoglobulin Gs) greatly increased their apparent affinities (KD = 0.17–1.2 nM), presumably due to the effects of avidity. These apparent affinities were notably higher than that of a previously reported anti-MERS-CoV S2 reference mAb (KD = 8.7 nM). Furthermore, two of the three mAbs (S2A3 and S2D5) bound only MERS-CoV (Erasmus Medical Center (EMC)) and not other CoVs, reflecting their high binding specificity. However, the mAbs lacked MERS-CoV neutralizing activity. Given their high affinity, specificity, and desirable stabilities, we anticipate that these anti-MERS-CoV mAbs would be suitable reagents for developing antibody-based diagnostics in laboratory or hospital settings for point-of-care testing.