Ah, HeLa cells... everytime I see the name now I think of Rebecca Skloot's newly released book on the subject. The treatment of Henrietta Lacks was unfair at best... Anyone who reads Skloot's book has to agree that Lacks was wronged. It may not be any consolation, but her legacy has become life-giving and has borne many innovations. Here is yet another cool little bit of research that use the HeLa cell line.

This article—published last week online in Biomicrofluidics—details the use of a microfluidic device that is used to observe, in real time, the death of the HeLa cancer cells.The platform uses a stepwise concentration gradient of drugs.

The authors conclude that:

This microfluidic platform can provide several advantages:

1. Cytotoxicity of drugs at multiple concentrations can be simultaneously studied in parallel on one chip, thus saving time and labor and reducing systematic errors
2. The sample size can be largely reduced
3. Microfluidic chambers facilitate long-time tracking of individual cells, and
4. microscopic imaging can give higher optical sensitivity than fluorescent scanner or UV-visible absorption.

...This prototypic system should be useful in the areas of biology and bioengineering, especially for discovering apoptosis-inducing agents as potential anticancer drug candidates.

Each of our bodies respond differently to stimuli. For example, I could go outside and lay down in a patch of Poison Ivy (Toxicodendron radicans) and be fine, but my mom will break out in grisly red bumps. A more apt example might be that I could take NyQuil for my cold, fall asleep and wake up rested, whereas a friend could take the same dose and lie awake in a restless state all night long.

The microfluidic chip above is manufactured by Fluidigm, and will be used to simultaneously perform more than 9,000 reactions to try and predict a patient's response to a particular treatment for prostate cancer. Credit: Fluidigm

There are genetic reasons some drugs produce different responses for different people. So, what's the solution? Test each patient's genes and run about 9,000 simultaneous reactions to analyze the differences in how a patient's genes are expressed, rather than the specific genetic structure. This is an important distinction—sequencing genetic code is not yet a good indication of what will ultimately be expressed. Expression is a complex system that relies on many many genes to decide what ultimately happens inside your body. So this is exactly what Howard Scher, chief of the Genitourinary Oncology Service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, has proposed in a new clinical trial for prostate cancer. The trial will take a look at rare tumor cells and analyze them using a microfluidic chip—the results will allow the researchers to decide how well the patient will respond to a certain drug. Essentially, the researchers are "building a profile" for the patient's tumor, which they can then use to decide what the best treatment will be. The chip—manufactured by Fluidigm, a South San Francisco biotech company—uses only a few nanoliters of reagent, and is combined with DNA through a series of valves and channels. One chip costs about $300. Emily Singer wrote a lovely and concise article about the upcoming trial in MIT's Technology Review.