When I was in the former company, I developed and commercialized a microporation method, "microcapillary electroporation" for advanced gene transfection.
I hope you can find biological insight from recent progress in microscale electroporation for stem cell and tissue engineering applications.
1. Microporation Technology
All of the electroporation technology has utilized the electroporation cuvettes as the disposable electric chambers for the delivery of high electric field to the biological samples. These electroporation cuvettes are composed of plastic chamber with narrow gap (0.2 ~ 0.4 cm gap) between two plate-type electrodes. However, the scientists at the Digital Bio Technology has found that most of the low transfection efficiencies are originated from this cuvette design.
The core technology of MICRIPORATION is utilization of capillary instead of the cuvette. In the capillary type of electric chamber, the gap size between two electrode is maximized and the surface area of electrode can be minimized compared to the cuvette type chamber. By doing so, the transfection efficiency and cell viability is dramatically increased. Why Microporation shows an outstanding transfection efficiency? Although the basic mechanism of microporation technology has not been elucidated well, it is evident that the increment of the gap size between two electrode shows an increment of transfection efficiency, mostly by the uniform electric field generated in the long and narrow capillary.
The harmful effects of large electrode surface area has been well known. For example, water dissociation during electroporation procedure generates O2 and H2 at each electrode. Also metal ion can be dissolved in the samples during electroporation. By these chemical reaction, harmful metal oxides are formed and pH is decreased. High heat generation is another harmful effect of conventional electroporation. However, Microporation technology eliminates all these problems of conventional electroporation, since the electrode surface area can be minimized in the capillary type electroporation chamber. Minimal pH decrement and metal ion formation, negligible heat generation is one of the most successful outcome of Microporation technology.
Never been easy and convenient!
2. Biological applications (last updated, Feb. 2009)