Desarrollo de microdispositivos para Análisis de Células y Biomoléculas – Microdevice Development for Analysis of Cells and Biomolecules

In the last decade, microfluidic devices have played an important role in many biological, chemical, and engineering applications. With this premise, in this work, microfluidic devices have been successfully developed for the optical sensing of cells with a solid-state immersed micropore chemically manufactured. In addition, cell death was assessed with chemotherapeutic drugs through fluorescence labeling of cell biomolecules to identify types of cell death. It is noteworthy that in this thesis a method of microfluidic device manufacturing was developed. This methodology does not need access to a cleanroom facility. In such a way, it is possible to integrate microfluidics in any laboratory. Several microfluidic device designs were fabricated and investigated to evaluate the ability of epoxy resin to replicate microstructures and to transfer them to polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) for assembling microfluidic devices. Furthermore, it was possible to manufacture a solid-state micropore and to integrate it into a multilayer microfluidic device. Microfluidic devices also made it possible to identify types of cell death caused by exposure to chemotherapeutic drugs commonly used to treat breast cancer patients. Finally, several microchannel architectures were designed, contrasted and studied to carry out electrophoresis of DNA molecular markers to study genes that confer resistance to wheat leaf rust.