Microscale Immune and Cell Analysis (MICA)

MICA offers an array of benefits over conven­tional approaches:

• New functionality. MICA offers the capa­bility to perform experimentation and mea­surement at single-cell resolution; this is not possible with commercial fluorescence-activated cell sorter (FACS) or proteomic techniques.
• Systems understanding. MICA is a single, unified platform that can perform multiple measurements (e.g., translocation and pro­tein abundance measurements) on the same population of cells, enabling understanding of the entire system of cell responses.
• Speed and efficiency. Researchers can use MICA to measure multiple components of cellular pathways simul­taneously and quickly—without requiring large quantities of cells and expensive reagents.
• Enhanced control. MICA’s systems integration capability eliminates manual steps and provides scientists with com­plete control of the cell environment—enabling measure­ments of concentration and time events.
• Convenient. MICA neatly fits on a typical microscope stage.
• Versatility. MICA can handle many different cell types, and the MICA hardware adapts to many commercial microscopes.

Within Sandia’s research of immune response, MICA has increased our understanding of exactly how immune cells counter viral or bacterial invasion. When fully developed, MICA could revolutionize the study of multiple cell mechanisms, engendering knowledge to advance biology, medicine, diag­nostics, and therapeutics. Potential applications of MICA include the following:

• Drug discovery and therapeutics. High information-content screening, evaluating how drug candid
• Diagnostics. Observing and sorting abnormal cells, enriching rare cell types
• Personalized medicine. Monitoring the behavior of individual patient cells
• Immune and infectious disease. Observing the mechanisms of infection
• Biomarker discovery. Identifying and quantifying specific proteins (e.g., cytokine profiling)

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