부산대학교 도서관

Cell transformation is an important process utilized in a wide variety of research and medical applications. Current methods for cell transformation generally depend on viral delivery or other methods which are often limited by inefficiency and/or toxicity. An alternative approach known as sonoporation may avoid these issues. Sonoporation can occur when ultrasound pulses induce microbubble oscillation near cellular membranes causing formation of transient pores. Sonoporation has been shown to enhance molecular delivery to cells. To improve the efficiency and consistency of molecular delivery via sonoporation, we have developed a high-performance ultrasonic flow system which integrates ultrasound and microfluidic technology. One particular application of interest involves loading red blood cells (RBCs) with trehalose for dry preservation. Storage of RBCs is limited by a short shelf-life of 42 days when refrigerated, and frozen storage is limited by the complex process that is required which involves adding and removing glycerol from RBCs before and after freezing them for storage at -80 oC. A technology that enables dry storage of blood at ambient temperature would have significant global impact. A potential solution to achieve this goal is to load RBCs with trehalose which can form a protective barrier around cell membranes during freezing and drying. Trehalose is a sugar molecule found in many organisms that survive freezing and desiccation, but mammalian cells are impermeable to trehalose. Therefore, trehalose must be actively loaded into human cells. In this study we have evaluated the performance of our ultrasonic flow system to load trehalose into RBCs. In addition, this platform technology can potentially be utilized to transform other cell types for a variety of different applications.