A flow-through electroporation chip integrated with viable cell sorting based on dielectrophoresis

Flow-through electroporation on a chip is a promising technique to introduce molecules into cells in applications of biological research, drug delivery and gene therapy. During the electroporation process, the electrical field also causes large amount of non-viable cells, which significantly influence the following biological procedure. Off-chip separation of the variable cells increases experimental complexity dramatically and results in further cell death. In this paper, we have developed a flow-through electroporation chip, in which dielectrophoresis (DEP) is employed to sort the viable cells and non-viable cells on chip. For the standard expression cell line HEK-293a (Human embryonic kidney cells), the ratio of the viable cells in the sorted sample was increased to 90% from 20% in the as-electroporated sample.