Microfluidic consortium lausanne

April 18, 2025
louise
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Conference, Elveflow, Microfluidic Consortium

The Microfluidic Consortium, guided by Peter Hewkin for over 16 years, gathers international leading industrial players in microfluidics, from flow control and valve technologies to chip manufacturing. Its purpose is simple but impactful: create regular opportunities throughout the year, across different locations worldwide, for members to meet researchers, exchange ideas, explore market trends, and offer support to those venturing into microfluidics. This year marked our first participation, joining as a representative of flow control solutions. It was a great opportunity to connect with fellow members, share insights, and engage with a community that’s actively shaping the future of the field.

Microfluidics Research in Lausanne

Johannes Bues

We had the chance to attend two fascinating presentations from local researchers. The first was by Johannes Bues from the Deplancke Lab at EPFL, who shared his work titled “High-throughput phenomics leveraging microfluidics for deterministic cell handling.” His talk focused on single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq), a powerful technique for studying gene expression at the level of individual cells within mixed populations. While scRNA-seq has become a standard in understanding tissue composition, it remains costly and inefficient, especially for small or precious samples like patient biopsies. Traditional methods often require thousands of cells for meaningful analysis, which leads to the need for bulk loading. This, in turn, generates confounding mosaic cell populations and obscures fine-grained insights.

To address these challenges, Johannes introduced DISCO, a Deterministic mRNA-capture bead and cell co-encapsulation system. Unlike conventional approaches that rely on passive cell capture, DISCO profit machine vision to actively detect and encapsulate individual cells and mRNA-capture beads into droplets. This not only enables continuous operation but also dramatically improves efficiency and scalability for processing low-input cell suspensions at high capture rates.

Building on this innovation, he presented the next phase of the work: IRIS (Integrated Robotic Imaging and Sorting). IRIS aims to push deterministic single-cell sequencing even further by replacing beads with precisely designed oligonucleotide barcodes, enabling the fusion of imaging and molecular profiling for each individual cell. Fully automated and high-throughput, the system envisions a future where identifying optimal cancer treatments could be as simple—and as fast—as visually inspecting a single cancer cell.

Christoph Mertens

The second presentation was given by Christoph Merten, Associate Professor at EPFL and head of the Laboratory of Biomedical Microfluidics (LBMM). His talk focused on the challenges of antibody discovery, particularly the complexity of testing antibodies due to the variability in the cells that produce them. To address this, his team developed a microfluidic assay that encapsulates individual B-cells with their corresponding target cells in a single droplet, along with a fluorescent reporter. This reporter emits a signal when there is a functional interaction between the antibody and the target, enabling sorting and analysis of the droplets based on fluorescence. In a technique called fluorescence-activated droplet sequencing (FAD-seq), the droplets of interest are then picoinjected with a lysis and RT-PCR mixture to allow on-chip amplification of the antibody hits before transferring them off-chip. Even though a significant fraction of the material may be lost during this transfer, sufficient copy numbers of the target sequences can still be recovered for meaningful downstream analysis.

Christoph Merten also discussed the limitations of patient-derived organoids in drug testing and emphasized the potential of using single cells from patients, encapsulated alongside FDA-approved drugs, or combinations thereof, for more realistic and personalized drug screening. Yet, one fundamental question remains: how do we choose the right quantitative method to assess drug efficacy, especially when dealing with multiple drugs acting through different mechanisms?

To address this, he presented his team’s method published in Nature Communications: Combi-Seq—a scalable microfluidic workflow for screening hundreds of drug combinations in picoliter droplets, using transcriptomic changes as the readout. The approach employs a deterministic combinatorial DNA barcoding strategy to encode treatment conditions, allowing highly multiplexed gene expression-based analysis of drug effects.

He wrapped up his talk with an inspiring example of translational research, describing how a complex academic prototype was transformed into a refined, user-friendly instrument through the creation of Thera.me—a microfluidic platform that helps identify the most effective cancer therapies by testing them directly on live tumor samples from patients.

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Microfluidic consortium Application talks

The application session by the Microfluidic Consortium members brought forward exciting innovations from several key industrial actors in microfluidics, each showcasing unique approaches and technologies that address current challenges in the field:

Micronit presented the advantages of incorporating micropillars into microfluidic chips—enhancing structural reinforcement, filtration, and surface interaction—while emphasizing that materials like glass, silicon, and certain polymers are better suited than PDMS for maintaining pillar shape and stability.
Femtoprint highlighted their expertise in fabricating glass microfluidic chips using selective laser etching, underscoring the many benefits of glass: transparency, anisotropic mechanical properties, corrosion resistance, biocompatibility, and reusability.
SuSoS discussed the importance of surface coatings in microfluidics, stressing that coatings must be homogeneous, chemically resistant, durable, and conformable without altering surface geometry; their solutions, based on click chemistry, are adaptable to a wide range of applications.
AMF, a Lausanne-based company, introduced their microfluidic rotary valve systems, originally adapted from HPLC components, designed to minimize dead volumes, prevent cross-contamination, and enable precise fluid control—offering both standard and custom solutions.

Elveflow, represented by our Scientific Content Manager Louise, presented our mission to support microfluidic researchers from lab to market. We understand the trade-offs scientists face between working with off-the-shelf tools and building custom systems that often lack standardization. To address this challenge, we offer customizable solutions including pressure-driven flow controllers, sensors, microfluidic valves, and clean-room-free microfabrication options. Our technology is used across a wide range of applications—from immunosensors and constriction assays to direct ink writing—and by researchers at all stages, from startups like Polaris Microsystems to industrial partners like Inside Therapeutics. We aim to share our flow control expertise by offering tailored support for both beginners and advanced users alike.
Rapid Fluidics showcased their rapid prototyping capabilities using high-quality methacrylate-based 3D printing resins and thermoplastics, including embedded features like electronics and integrated microfluidic connections; they impressed the audience with a vascular model derived from anatomical X-ray images for advanced research testing.
Z-microsystems walked us through the stages of plastic chip manufacturing, emphasizing the importance of early material selection and matching the final product as soon as possible; they highlighted a range of fabrication methods—from precision milling to injection molding—and stressed the value of adding functional elements like sensors, electrodes, and surface treatments.
HiComp compared the properties of various materials used in microfluidic chip fabrication and the challenges of scaling from prototyping to mass production; they discussed bonding techniques, sealing issues, and structural differences between PDMS, 3D printed prototypes, and injection-molded chips—reminding us of the common pitfalls in transitioning from lab to market.

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Elveflow User Highlights

Two inspiring visits during our Lausanne trip around the Microfluidic Consortium showcased how researchers are using microfluidics to address both environmental and medical challenges.

On the healthcare front, Carine BenAdiba, from CHUV in Lausanne, shared her research on uncovering the cellular mechanisms behind mood disorders such as bipolar disorder and depression. Her team reprograms patient-derived urine cells into neurons and analyzes them using their device, Neur-Xplorer, to track and monitor mental health biomarkers. This advanced holographic microscopy enables a better understanding of how individual cells respond to different stimuli, for more personalized approaches to mental healthcare. Her team will present Neur-Xplorer at the Universal Exhibition in Osaka (May 2025) as part of their vision for the society of tomorrow.
Zohreh Sheidaei, from the Ludwig Group at EPFL, works with droplet-based microfluidics as microscale reactors to study bacterial degradation of plastics. This approach offers a controlled environment for investigating how microbes break down plastic materials, contributing valuable insights to the field of sustainable waste management.

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Conclusion

The Microfluidic Consortium in Lausanne offered a clear reflection of the field’s momentum, highlighting the incredible range of applications microfluidics now touches, from single-cell sequencing and antibody discovery to mental health research and sustainable materials. The diversity of talks reminded us that microfluidics is more than a lab technique, it’s becoming an essential platform technology across healthcare, environmental science, and engineering.

A key takeaway from the event is the importance of thoughtful design and material choices early on, especially when aiming to scale up. Success doesn’t just depend on scientific insight—it requires reliable tools, well-adapted components, and systems that support both reproducibility and flexibility.

Whether you’re prototyping a new method or industrializing an existing solution, choosing the right microfluidic tools can make all the difference. With customizable instruments and dedicated support that we provide at Elveflow, the transition from research to real-world application becomes faster, more accurate, and more impactful. With the right ecosystem in place, microfluidics is ready to move from concept to implementation at scale.

See you in the next Microfluidic Consortium event in Boston !