Microfluidic Chips for High-throughput Drug Screening

....The objective of the proposed 3-year project is to design and fabricate a microchip system using enabling MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical-System) technology for steroid-related drug screening and identification. The success of the proposed project will create breakthrough-enabling microfluidic protein chips for fast drug screening. Based on crucial platform technologies we developed in the phase-one of the “National Science and Technology Program in Pharmaceuticals and Biotechnology”, we will apply these microfluidic chips for the application of fast drug screening.
....Several innovative and integrated protein chips will be proposed and integrated for this purpose in the phase-one of the program, including PIMM (Protein-Protein Interaction Microfluidic Module) and PIMM (Protein Identification Microfluidic Module, PIMM). The screening mechanisms include (1) binding assay and (2) enzyme activity, which all will be executed using the proposed protein chips.
....Several innovative and integrated chip-systems will be implemented in the sub-project include:
(1) Cell preparation module: cells will be cultured, counted and collected on a miniaturized chip.
(2) Nucleus preparation module: nucleus and proteins will be collected and extracted for subsequent purpose.
(3) All-on-chip PPIMM: on-chip protein interaction will be performed.
(4) On-chip optical detection system integrated with microfluidic chips to make compact system feasible.

....This challenging sub-project will be implemented in MEMS Common Laboratory in NCKU, as well as the foundry services provided in Taiwan and USA. The efforts of the first year will be focused on the development of key technology and individual functional chips. In order to provide reliable test chips for other two sub-projects, we will refine PPIMM chips developed in the phase one of the program. The chips will be tested extensively in the second year and the results will be used to improve the design of the microchips. The functional protein chips will be used by the researchers from other two projects. The major focus of the project in the third year will be the integration of each chip for fast drug screening. The microchip will be demonstrated as a powerful tool for fast screening of steroid-related drugs.