PolyU Student Entrepreneurial Proof-of-Concept (POC) Funding Scheme is a funding initiative launched in 2017 as one of the key entrepreneurship education components at PolyU. With the kind support from ‘Dr Winnie S M Tang-PolyU Student Innovation & Entrepreneurship Scholarship’ since 2022, POC Fund aims to instil a problem-driven innovation mindset into young talents through experiential learning and student-initiated research and development.
Dr Winnie S M Tang - PolyU Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship Scholarship (鄧淑明博士-理大學生創新創業獎學金)
Principal applicant: Chi Chung TSOI
Supervisor: Prof. Xuming ZHANG
PolyU Student Entrepreneurial Proof-of-Concept (POC) Fund Scheme (學生創業概念驗證基金計劃)
Project: High-Throughput Digital Microfluidics Platform (POC-23(1)-047), 22 Feb 2023
Single-cell microalgae are among the most efficient photosynthetic systems and have found prosperous applications in biofuels and nutraceuticals. However, two major problems are hindering their big success: (1) breeding of highly-productive strains for specific products and (2) optimization of growth conditions, both strongly affect the productivity and cost. Traditional methods using flask of samples are of low success rate and low efficiency. This project will develop a unique design called electrically-addressable microfluidic XY array (in short, XY array) to control the trap and release of any individual microalgal cell, and the same XY array can used for both strain selection and growth condition optimization. Although microfluidic arrays of mammalian cells have been extensively studied for drug screening, our design is distinctive due to the capability to release any single cell. This microfluidic platform is superior to the traditional methods in several aspects: original and patentable technique, better scalability for high throughput, real-time monitoring of growth status and targeted content of every cell, and high success rate to find optimal seed strains. The XY array examines the cells one by one to select the best few cells from a large number (~10,000) of source microalgae, suggesting high chances to get the best seed strains. Our microfluidic platform is not intended to replace the current methods, instead it can be used to complement them by further screening the cells preselected by the current methods. We have developed the key techniques such as droplet generations and single droplet manipulation and we are now making the prototypes. To our best knowledge, this is the first microfluidic platform for both screening and optimizing microalgal strains with real-time monitoring of grown status and targeted content. It would find broad applications in microalgae industry for advanced nutrients (e.g., EPA), nutraceuticals and biofuels.
