Microfluidic intracellular delivery approaches based on plasma membrane poration have shown promise for addressing the limitations of conventional cellular engineering techniques in a wide range of applications in biology and medicine. However, the inherent stochasticity of the poration process in many of these approaches often results in a trade-off between delivery efficiency and cellular viability, thus potentially limiting their utility. Herein, we present a novel microfluidic device concept that mitigates this trade-off by providing opportunity for deterministic mechanoporation (DMP) of cells en masse. This is achieved by the impingement of each cell upon a single needle-like penetrator during aspiration-based capture, followed by diffusive influx of exogenous cargo through the resulting membrane pore, once the cells are released by reversal of flow. Massive parallelization enables high throughput operation, while single-site poration allows for delivery of small and large-molecule cargos in difficult-to-transfect cells with efficiencies and viabilities that exceed both conventional and emerging transfection techniques. As such, DMP shows promise for advancing cellular engineering practice in general and engineered cell product manufacturing in particular.

Over the last 10 years, the United States has witnessed a striking increase in school shootings (Riedman and O’Neil 2020). Most legislation addressing the issue has been focused on gun control with liberal states such as California passing stringent gun laws. However, it is important to acknowledge that the school shooting crisis is a multifaceted problem that will not be resolved by gun regulations alone. California should establish social-emotional learning programs in K-12 schools to help address the underlying issues that drive individuals to gun violence. These programs will provide students with the skills necessary to reduce aggressive behaviors as well as increase overall student well-being and academic achievement (Espelage et al. 2013). Along with gun control measures, California’s policymakers should establish social-emotional learning programs in K-12 schools to reduce the number of school shooting incidents. Effective implementation of such programs could transform California from the state with the highest rate of school shootings in the country to an exemplary model for other states to follow in tackling the school shooting crisis.