Automatic Generation of Drug Concentration Gradient by a Modified Ink-Jet Printer and its Application in Drug Screening

Yong Luo*¹, Xiaorui Li¹, Yueyang Qu¹, Jiu Deng¹, Zhigang Gao¹, Weijie Zhao¹, Yao Lu², Bingcheng Lin² and Tingjiao Liu³

Received: January 19, 2018;   Published: January 31, 2018

DOI: 10.26717/BJSTR.2018.02.000708

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Abstract

Manual preparation of drug concentration gradient is labor-intensive and limits the efficiency of a drug screening to some extent, especially at large scale. In this study, we reported an automatic method to generate drug concentration gradient in 24-well plate. We loaded drug solution in a modified hot ink-jet printer, designed printing pattern in the WORD software, customized the concentration gradient in the WORD software by RGB coding, and finally printed the drug concentration gradient in the 24-well plate. A drug concentration gradient can be automatically generated within 5s in arbitrary pattern. On the basis of this flexible technology, we developed an ink-jet printer-based drug screening assay. Concentration gradient of 5-fluorouracil, as well as Mcf-7 cells, was printed in the 24-well plate, and the inhibition rate of Mcf-7 cells was measured by MTT method. This was the first time that hot inkjet printing technology was used in drug screening.

Key words: Bioprinting; Drug Screening; Concentration Gradient; Ink-Jet Printer; RGB

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