Cell Culture Microfluidic Biochips: Experimental Throughput Maximization

Microfluidic biochips offer a promising alternative to a conventional biochemical laboratory, integrating all necessary functionalities on-chip in order to perform biochemical applications. Researchers have started to propose computer-aided design tools for the synthesis of such biochips. Our focus in this paper is on the optimization of how a biochemical application is performed on a biochip.

In this paper, we consider cell culture biochips, where several cell colonies are exposed to soluble compounds and monitored in real-time to determine the right combination of factors that leads to the desired results. These biochips have high research potential, e.g., cancer research, stem cell, drug discovery.

The application considered is a full-factorial experimental design, where all possible combinations of compounds are applied. We are interested to automatically synthesize (currently done manually) the settings of an experimental design, consisting of decision on the placement pattern of cell colonies and the insertion schedule of compounds such that the biochip throughput is maximized, thus increasing the system productivity, saving time and reducing costs.

We have proposed a Simulated Annealing metaheuristic for experimental design generation for the cell culture microfluidic biochips, and we have evaluated our approach using multiple experimental setups.