ABSTRACT
Lab-on-a-chip (LOC) technology is capable of performing liquid-phase analysis with a dramatic reduction of sample and reagent volume. Flow cytometry has become a method of choice for rapidly analyzing large numbers of cells individually using light-scattering, fluorescence, and absorbance measurements. Flow cytometric analysis of primary cells can present a challenge for researchers due to limited availability and life span of these cells. Typical applications that benefit from the LOC cytometry approach are the monitoring of protein expression or apoptotic processes in eukaryotic cells. However, researchers' results show that the microfluidic chip-based technology allows the analysis of very few cells per sample, while maintaining consistent results compared to conventional flow cytometry. Monitoring cellular protein expression is a critical step for characterization of cell populations or assay optimization and can be achieved by staining the protein of interest with specific antibodies.
