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"Pick and Place" Cell Robot:
"Pick and Place" Cell Robot:
Moving Cells to Improve the Efficiency of HIV Research
Senior Design Project for Mechanical Engineering at UC San Diego
Winter Quarter, 2012
Presented By: Gregory O'Neill, Laith Kawar, Clark Tella, Fernando Ng-Chie, Jonathan Thinh
Project Overview
Background and Objective
When HIV was first diagnosed in America in 1965 there was no effective way to treat the virus. By 1983 HIV had proliferated across America and the disease became known as AIDs. It was not until 1995 that highly active anti retro viral therapy (HAART) was used to make it possible to live with HIV. Unfortunately HAART is not completely effective at removing the virus and HIV+ cells will still remain. It has been found that approximately 100 out of every million memory T lymphocyte's in a patient that has undergone HAART will still be HIV+. By analyzing the HIV+ memory T lymphocyte genome using DNA analysis researchers can begin to uncover a new and better treatment for HIV+ patients.
Dr. Matt Strain is currently attempting to research HIV+ T lymphocytes by placing the cells into a micro array. Each micro array slide is printed with approximately 106 square wells that measure 30x30x30µm. A cell solution is placed over the array and with some time, one cell settles into each well. Once they are settled in the micro-array slide shown on the left in Figure 1, Dr. Strain would like to remove the cells from the micro-array slide to the micro-titer well using an automated mechanical system.
Figure 1. Transferring cells from microarray wells (left) to micro titer wells (right) is the goal.
Figure 2. Micro array on standard microscope slide (left), zoomed in 10x (right)
A microscope with an XY stage holds the microarray slide and the micro titer plate side by side. By attaching the cell extracting tool to a Z axis actuator and mounting the Z axis to the microscope all three axes were automated such that cells could be removed from any well in the array and placed to any well in the titer.
Figure 3. Design concept with the XY and the Z stage mounted to the microscope. On top of the
XY stage is the microtiter (grey honeycomb) and mircoarray (green) which are help in place using
a custom made tray (yellow). The Z axis holds the plank which holds the pick and place needle.
Description of Final Design
The purpose of developing a pick-and-place cell robot is so that Dr. Matt Strain will be able to easily maneuver the HIV+ cells from the small microarray wells into much bigger micro titer wells. Once the HIV+ cells are extracted from the microarray and placed into the micro titer plate, they can then each be easily DNA analyzed. Beads are used in lieu of cells. An apparatus has been designed where an extraction tool would be raised and lowered in the Z-axis to remove beads from a micro-array. Two bead extraction methods methods were tested and proved to work successfully. The two links below elaborate in detail each method:
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