Microchip Technology Screens for More Than 1000 Molecules

Scientists have developed technology to perform over a thousand chemical reactions at once on a stamp-size, PC-controlled microchip.

The technology, which is based on microfluidics, utilized miniaturized devices to automatically handle and channel tiny amounts of liquids and chemicals invisible to the eye. The chemical reactions were performed using in situ click chemistry, and analyzed using mass spectrometry.

A thousand cycles of complex processes, including controlled sampling and mixing of a library of reagents and sequential microchannel rinsing, all took place on the microchip device and were completed in a few hours. Developed by a University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA; Los Angeles, CA, USA) team, the technology is restricted to analyzing the reaction results offline, but the aim is to automate this aspect of the work also. It could accelerate the identification of potential drug candidates for treating diseases like cancer.

The team intends to utilize the technology for diagnostic screening reactions in which chemicals and material samples are in limited supply; e.g., protein enzymes such as kinases that play critical roles in the malignant transformation of cancer. According to the scientists, the technology will open up many areas for biologic and medicinal study.

"The precious enzyme molecules required for a single in situ click reaction in a traditional lab now can be split into hundreds of duplicates for performing hundreds of reactions in parallel, thus revolutionizing the laboratory process, reducing reagent consumption and accelerating the process for identifying potential drug candidates," said study author Prof. Hsian-Rong Tseng, scientist at UCLA's Crump Institute for Molecular Imaging, associate professor molecular and medical pharmacology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and a member of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA.

The Study appeared online in the August 2009 edition of Science Daily.

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