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Browsing by Author "Chen, Ming"

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    A Silicon-based Coral-like Nanostructured Microfluidics to Isolate Rare Cells in Human Circulation: Validation by SK-BR-3 Cancer Cell Line and Its Utility in Circulating Fetal Nucleated Red Blood Cells
    (2019-02-01)
    Ma, Gwo-Chin
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    Lin, Wen-Hsiang
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    Huang, Chung-Er
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    Chang, Ting-Yu
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    Liu, Jia-Yun
    Circulating fetal cells (CFCs) in maternal blood are rare but have a strong potential to be the target for noninvasive prenatal diagnosis (NIPD). Cell Reveal(TM) system is a silicon-based microfluidic platform capable to capture rare cell populations in human circulation. The platform is recently optimized to enhance the capture efficiency and system automation. In this study, spiking tests of SK-BR-3 breast cancer cells were used for the evaluation of capture efficiency. Then, peripheral bloods from 14 pregnant women whose fetuses have evidenced non-maternal genomic markers (e.g., de novo pathogenic copy number changes) were tested for the capture of circulating fetal nucleated red blood cells (fnRBCs). Captured cells were subjected to fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) on chip or recovered by an automated cell picker for molecular genetic analyses. The capture rate for the spiking tests is estimated as 88.1%. For the prenatal study, 2-71 fnRBCs were successfully captured from 2 mL of maternal blood in all pregnant women. The captured fnRBCs were verified to be from fetal origin. Our results demonstrated that the Cell Reveal(TM) system has a high capture efficiency and can be used for fnRBC capture that is feasible for the genetic diagnosis of fetuses without invasive procedures.
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    Noninvasive prenatal diagnosis of fetal aneuploidy by circulating fetal nucleated red blood cells and extravillous trophoblasts using silicon-based nanostructured microfluidics
    (2017-12-02)
    Huang, Chung-Er
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    Ma, Gwo-Chin
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    Jou, Hei-Jen
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    Lin, Wen-Hsiang
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    Lee, Dong-Jay
    Background: Noninvasive prenatal testing (NIPT) based on cell-free DNA in maternal circulation has been accepted worldwide by the clinical community since 2011 but limitations, such as maternal malignancy and fetoplacental mosaicism, preclude its full replacement of invasive prenatal diagnosis. We present a novel silicon-based nanostructured microfluidics platform named as "Cell Reveal (TM)" to demonstrate the feasibility of capturing circulating fetal nucleated red blood cells (fnRBC) and extravillous cytotrophoblasts (EVT) for cell-based noninvasive prenatal diagnosis (cbNIPD). Methods: The "Cell Reveal (TM)" system is a silicon-based, nanostructured microfluidics using immunoaffinity to capture the trophoblasts and the nucleated RBC (nRBC) with specific antibodies. The automated computer analysis software was used to identify the targeted cells through additional immunostaining of the corresponding antigens. The identified cells were retrieved for whole genome amplification for subsequent investigations by micromanipulation in one microchip, and left in situ for subsequent fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) in another microchip. When validation, bloods from pregnant women (n = 24) at gestational age 11-13(+6) weeks were enrolled. When verification, bloods from pregnant women (n = 5) receiving chorionic villus sampling or amniocentesis at gestation age 11(+4)-21 weeks with an aneuploid or euploid fetus were enrolled, followed by genetic analyses using FISH, short tandem repeat (STR) analyses, array comparative genomic hybridization, and next generation sequencing, in which the laboratory is blind to the fetal genetic complement. Results: The numbers of captured targeted cells were 1-44 nRBC/2 ml and 1-32 EVT/2 ml in the validation group. The genetic investigations performed in the verification group confirmed the captured cells to be fetal origin. In every 8 ml of the maternal blood being blindly tested, both fnRBC and EVT were always captured. The numbers of captured fetal cells were 14-22 fnRBC/4 ml and 1-44 EVT/4 ml of maternal blood. Conclusions: This report is one of the first few to verify the capture of fnRBC in addition to EVT. The scalability of our automated system made us one step closer toward the goal of in vitro diagnostics.
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    Power-to-fuels via solid-oxide electrolyzer: Operating window and techno-economics
    (2019-08-01)
    Wang, Ligang
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    Chen, Ming
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    Kungas, Rainer
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    Lin, Tzu-En
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    Diethelm, Stefan
    Power-to-fuel systems via solid-oxide electrolysis are promising for storing excess renewable electricity by efficient electrolysis of steam (or co-electrolysis of steam and CO2) into hydrogen (or syngas), which can be further converted into synthetic fuels with plant-wise thermal integration. Electrolysis stack performance and durability determine the system design, performance, and long-term operating strategy; thus, solid-oxide electrolyzer based power-to-fuels were investigated from the stack to system levels. At the stack level, the data from a 6000-h stack testing under laboratory isothermal conditions were used to calibrate a quasi-2D model, which enables to predict practical, isothermal stack performance with reasonable accuracy. Feasible stack operating windows meeting various design specifications (e.g., specific syngas composition) were further generated to support the selection of operating points. At the system level, with the chosen similar stack operating points, various power-to-fuel systems, including power-to-hydrogen, power-to-methane, power-to-methanol (dimethyl ether) and power-to-gasoline, were compared techno-economically considering system-level heat integration. Several operating strategies of the stack were compared to address the increase in stack temperature due to degradation. The modeling results show that the system efficiency for producing H-2, methane, methanol/dimethyl ether and gasoline decreases sequentially from 94% (power-to-H-2) to 64% (power-to-gasoline), based on a higher heating value. Co-electrolysis, which allows better heat integration, can improve the efficiency of the systems with less exothermic fuel-synthesis processes (e.g., methanol/dimethyl ether) but offers limited advantages for power-tomethane and power-to-gasoline systems. In a likely future scenario, where the growing amount of electricity from renewable sources results in increasing periods of a negative electricity price, solid oxide electrolyser based power-to-fuel systems are highly suitable for levelling the price fluctuations in an economic way.
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