Are you currently facing challenges with high sample consumption, long turnaround times, or limited throughput in your peptide and protein analysis workflows? Creative Biolabs' Microfluidic Development Service helps you overcome these limitations by providing customized lab-on-a-chip solutions, enabling high-sensitivity analysis with minimal sample volumes. Through advanced microfluidic engineering and integrated detection technologies, we streamline your processes to deliver faster, more reliable results.
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Background
Microfluidics, which involves handling fluids at microscopic dimensions, has transformed biochemical research by scaling down conventional lab operations into integrated chip formats. This "lab-on-a-chip" methodology offers a versatile foundation for a wide spectrum of uses, such as examining peptides and proteins. These biologically active compounds, crucial to cell mechanisms, demand precise and high-throughput analytical techniques for applications ranging from biomarker identification to drug manufacturing standards.
Fig.1 HPLC-MS analysis on a microfluidic device.1,3
The controlled environment within microfluidic channels allows for precise sample handling, mixing, and separation, overcoming the limitations of conventional, macro-scale techniques. The benefits of this approach are well-documented in scientific literature, with studies highlighting its ability to enable rapid, high-throughput analysis with minimal sample volumes. For example, microfluidic platforms have been successfully coupled with advanced detection methods like mass spectrometry (MS) and laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) to achieve exceptional sensitivity. Furthermore, the technology's ability to manipulate individual cells and their contents has opened new avenues for single-cell proteomics, revealing cellular heterogeneity that is often masked by traditional bulk analysis.
Types of Microfluidic Analysis
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High-Throughput Screening: Microfluidic systems enable the rapid screening of thousands of drug candidates or protein interactions in parallel, significantly accelerating the early stages of drug discovery.
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Peptide and Protein Separation: The precise control over flow and electric fields allows for high-resolution electrophoretic and chromatographic separation of complex protein mixtures.
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Protein Crystal Structure Analysis: Microfluidic devices can be used for high-throughput screening of crystallization conditions, requiring minimal protein sample and leading to the rapid growth of high-quality crystals for structural determination.
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Immunoassay and Biosensor Integration: Platforms are designed with integrated biosensors to perform sensitive and specific protein quantification and binding studies, crucial for diagnostics and antibody development.
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Single-Cell Proteomics: The ability to isolate and manipulate individual cells allows for the analysis of protein expression at the single-cell level, providing insights into cellular heterogeneity that are not possible with traditional bulk methods.
Applications
Our microfluidic solutions are highly versatile and can be applied across numerous fields:
Drug Discovery and Development
High-throughput screening of drug candidates, protein-protein interaction studies, and pharmacokinetic analysis.
Proteomics and Diagnostics
Identification of disease biomarkers, single-cell protein analysis, and development of point-of-care diagnostic devices.
Food and Environmental Analysis
Detection of contaminants or allergens in food, and monitoring of environmental pollutants.
Quality Control in Biopharmaceutical Manufacturing
Rapid, automated analysis for ensuring the purity and integrity of therapeutic proteins.
What We Can Offer
Creative Biolabs provides a comprehensive suite of products and services tailored to your microfluidic needs:
Design and fabrication of bespoke microfluidic chips in various materials (PDMS, glass, silicon, etc.) to meet specific application requirements.
From initial design and chip fabrication to assay development and system integration, we provide an end-to-end service.
Protein and Peptide Separation on a Chip
Development of platforms for high-resolution electrophoretic and chromatographic separation.
Immunoassay and Biosensor Integration
Creation of chips with integrated detection capabilities for sensitive protein quantification and binding studies.
A selection of off-the-shelf microfluidic chips optimized for common applications like droplet generation, mixing, and simple cell sorting. These are ideal for labs looking for a quick and cost-effective entry point into microfluidics.
Leverage our specialized benefits—Request a quotation today
Workflow
Why Choose Us
Creative Biolabs combines deep scientific expertise with a client-centric approach to deliver exceptional microfluidic solutions. Our commitment to innovation, quality, and collaboration sets us apart.
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Miniaturization: Our platforms dramatically reduce sample and reagent volumes, leading to significant cost savings.
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High Sensitivity: By concentrating analytes in micro-scale channels, we achieve superior signal-to-noise ratios, enabling the detection of low-abundance proteins.
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Speed and Automation: Automated workflows on our chips reduce hands-on time and accelerate analysis, from sample preparation to data acquisition.
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Enhanced Reproducibility: The precise control of the microenvironment within our chips minimizes variability, ensuring consistent and reproducible results.
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Integrated Solutions: We offer seamless integration of multiple steps—such as mixing, separation, and detection—onto a single chip, creating a streamlined, end-to-end solution.
Published Data
Fig.2 Microfluidic diffusional mixing for the analysis of PPIs.2,3
The article explores the use of microfluidic technologies to study and quantify protein-protein interactions (PPIs). The authors highlight the advantages of microfluidics, such as the ability to control mass transport at the micron scale, which allows for the analysis of proteins in solution without the need for traditional surfaces or solid matrices. The review discusses various microfluidic techniques, including those that use diffusional mixing, electrophoresis, and droplet compartmentalization, and explains how these methods can be used to determine key biophysical parameters like diffusion coefficients and binding kinetics. The article emphasizes how these innovative approaches provide a rapid and native-state analysis of PPIs, addressing some of the challenges associated with conventional bulk experimental methods.
This evaluation examines multiple experimental methodologies and their outcomes. One approach, microfluidic diffusional sizing (MDS), is thoroughly described for characterizing protein-protein interactions by measuring alterations in protein hydrodynamic radius (RH) during binding events. Provided data illustrate MDS implementations, including an analysis of clusterin with amyloid-β fibrils that successfully produced binding kinetics. Another emphasized method utilizes microfluidic platforms for single-molecule Förster resonance energy transfer (smFRET) imaging. The article shows results where the dissociation of protein complexes (e.g., NCBD and ACTR) could be observed and quantified within milliseconds, demonstrating the rapid analysis capabilities of these systems. Furthermore, the review touches on methods that use electrophoretic forces to manipulate and characterize interacting proteins, providing a versatile toolkit for biophysical analysis.
FAQs
Q: What are the fundamental scientific advantages of microfluidic-based analysis compared to conventional methods?
A: Microfluidics provides several key scientific benefits. By miniaturizing fluid handling, it significantly reduces the required sample and reagent volumes, leading to substantial cost savings. The precise control over the micro-environment allows for faster reaction kinetics and enhanced mass transfer, which in turn leads to improved assay sensitivity and detection limits for low-abundance analytes.
Q: What is involved in the technical implementation and integration of a new microfluidic platform?
A: Implementing a microfluidic system involves a series of steps, including custom chip design, material selection, and integration with fluidic control and detection hardware. The process culminates in a fully validated system, with all operational protocols and performance metrics clearly documented.
Q: Can a single microfluidic platform be used for analyzing a wide range of biomolecules, from small peptides to large proteins?
A: Yes, the platform is highly adaptable. By tuning the channel dimensions, surface chemistries, and assay parameters, we can customize a solution to handle a broad range of molecular sizes. This includes small peptides, large therapeutic proteins like antibodies, and even subcellular components, making it a versatile tool for diverse projects.
Q: How do microfluidic separation techniques compare to established methods such as HPLC or gel electrophoresis (e.g., SDS-PAGE)?
A: Microfluidic separation offers distinct advantages over traditional methods. Unlike HPLC, which requires large solvent volumes, on-chip chromatography uses microliter volumes and significantly reduces separation times. Compared to gel electrophoresis, microfluidic systems can integrate multiple assay steps, such as sample injection, separation, and detection, onto a single chip, streamlining the workflow and minimizing manual intervention.
Q: What are the typical detection methodologies integrated with microfluidic platforms for peptide and protein analysis?
A: Common detection methodologies integrated with microfluidic platforms include optical techniques such as laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) and surface plasmon resonance (SPR), which are excellent for real-time binding kinetics and high sensitivity. Electrochemical detection is used for specific label-free analysis. For highly complex samples, microfluidic devices can be interfaced directly with mass spectrometers (MS) for comprehensive and sensitive proteomic analysis.
Featured Services
Feature Products
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CAT No
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Material
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Product Name
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Application
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MFCH-001
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Glass
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Herringbone Microfluidic Chip
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Processing samples and reagents in Nucleic acid analysis, blood Analysis, immunoassays, and point-of-care diagnostics.
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MFMM-0723-JS12
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Glass
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Double Emulsion Droplet Chip
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Our double emulsion microfluidic chip, incorporating localized modifications and a classic flow-focusing structure, is specifically designed to generate stable and uniform double emulsion droplets.
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MFCH-005
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PDMS
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3D Cell Culture Chip-Neuron
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Neuron cell culture and study of axon transport, axon protein synthesis, axon damage/regeneration, signal transduction of axon to somatic signal.
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MFCH-009
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PDMS
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Synvivo-Idealized Co-Culture Network Chips (IMN2 radial)
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SynBBB 3D Blood Brain Barrier Model/SynRAM 3D Inflammation Model/SynTumor 3D Cancer Model/SynTox 3D Toxicology Model.
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MFMM1-GJS4
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COC
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BE-Doubleflow Standard
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Studying circulating particles, cell interactions, and simple organ-on-a-chip system construction.
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MFMM1-GJS6
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COC
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BE-Transflow Custom
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Used to construct a cell interface or Air-Liquid interface (ALI) to study more complex culture systems.
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References
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Ribeiro da Silva, Meire et al. "A rapid, simple and sensitive microfluidic chip electrophoresis mass spectrometry method for monitoring amino acids in cell culture media." Journal of Chromatography. A vol. 1651 (2021): 462336. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chroma.2021.462336
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Arter, William E., et al. "Microfluidic approaches for the analysis of protein–protein interactions in solution." Biophysical Reviews 12.2 (2020): 575-585. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12551-020-00679-4
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Distributed under Open Access license CC BY 4.0, without modification.
