High throughput analysis of drug effects on single breast cancer cells using droplet-microfluidic devices

This paper reports the analysis of drug effects on single breast cancer cells using the droplet-microfluidic devices for the first time. Hundreds of droplets can be generated in less than 5 minutes. Each droplet serves as a nanoliter-volume titer plate. About 50% of the droplets contain a human breast cancer cell MDA-MB-231 and Cytochalasin D drug solution. The drug effects on each cell are monitored by analyzing the fluorescence image of each cell. Clear change of the cell shape and size has been observed after incubation, suggesting this approach is a potential viable technical platform for drug effect analysis and for high throughput drug screen and discovery.