This project has been focused on creating an autonomous micromanipulation solutions for biological applications integrating optical manipulation, microfluidics, and machine intelligence. Its motivation has been the fact that single-cell analysis is critical in many biomedical applications, such as clinical trials, in-vitro fertilization, forensic analysis, and single-cell omics. While some techniques were already commercially available at the inception of this project, single-cell approaches still had several limitations. Mechanical tools (e.g. motorised micropipettes and microneedles, centrifugation) were invasive and prone to damage the cells. Labeled-sorting methods (e.g. flow-cytometry) could affect cell viability for subsequent protocols. Non-invasive sorting procedures based on microfluidics required high amounts of cells and numerous repetitions to obtain a significant fraction of target cells. Furthermore, in all cases these methods required expert handling and were labor intensive. With Lucero, we developed a solution that overcomes these problems based on a smart optofluidic platform: contactless thanks to the use of optical tweezers, capable of controlling the local cellular environment thanks to the use of microfluidics, and capable of autonomous and accurate operation thanks to machine intelligence.
The outcome of this project has permitted us to launch the start-up LuceroBio, which is based in the Gothenburg area in Sweden (
https://www.lucerobio.com(si apre in una nuova finestra)) and has received support from Chalmers Ventures.
