5. CONCLUSIONS
In this study, we developed a microfluidic device containing 2D, gold microelectrode arrays and performed DEP experiments to determine dielectric properties of U87 glioma cell line. We simulated the distribution of electric field and displayed the pDEP regions in the microchannel. We observed that glioma cells exhibited the response of crossover frequency between 100 kHz – 150 kHz, 3 Vpp, where cells did not experience either nDEP or pDEP forces. We performed heterogeneity analysis of the cells applying frequencies from 200 kHz to 10 MHz. We showed that 50% of the glioma cells were influenced by pDEP forces, when we increased the frequency 500 kHz, the dielectric distribution of the cells was very uniform compared to 300 kHz. We showed that 45% of the glioma cells responded either weakly or moderately to DEP forces independently associated to the applied frequency. Therefore, our further study will focus on separation of these U87 glioma subpopulations and their downstream analysis. Our goal is to reveal whether dielectrophoretic response of glioma cells can be used as a maker to determine organization of the cells in the spatial distribution of the invasive migration. When we define measurable, precise, and reproducible characterization parameters of glioma cells, we might contribute to combat with aggressiveness and invasiveness of glioma cancers.