High-Throughput Platform for Efficient Chemical Transfection, Virus Packaging, and Transduction

Intracellular gene delivery is normally required to study gene functions. A versatile platform able to perform both chemical transfection and viral transduction to achieve efficient gene modification in most cell types is needed. Here we demonstrated that high throughput chemical transfection, virus packaging, and transduction can be conducted efficiently on our previously developed superhydrophobic microwell array chip (SMAR-chip). A total of 169 chemical transfections were successfully performed on the chip in physically separated microwells through a few simple steps, contributing to the convenience of DNA delivery and media change on the SMAR-chip. Efficiencies comparable to the traditional transfection in multi-well plates (~65%) were achieved while the manual operations were largely reduced. Two transfection procedures, the dry method amenable for the long term storage of the transfection material and the wet method for higher efficiencies were developed. Multiple transfections in a scheduled manner were performed to further increase the transfection efficiencies or deliver multiple genes at different time points. In addition, high throughput virus packaging integrated with target cell transduction were also proved which resulted in a transgene expression efficiency of >70% in NIH 3T3 cells. In summary, the SMAR-chip based high throughput gene delivery is efficient and versatile, which can be used for large scale genetic modifications in a variety of cell types.