Toward Deep Biophysical Cytometry: Prospects and Challenges

Targeted Therapeutics Delivery by Exploiting Biophysical Properties of Senescent Cells

“…Advances in biophysical cytometry such as deformability cytometry and cell mass sensing has allowed for the characterization of cellular biophysical phenotypes, revealing of cellular heterogeneity and with singlecell precision. [148] Yet, when used in tandem with other innovations including microfluidics, imaging technologies, and deep learning, biophysical cytometry can go much deeper into bridging the gap between biophysical and biomolecular markers and establishing biophysical-biomolecular links. [148] It is also worthy to note that biophysical properties can be characterized in a label-free and non-destructive manner.…”

“…[148] Yet, when used in tandem with other innovations including microfluidics, imaging technologies, and deep learning, biophysical cytometry can go much deeper into bridging the gap between biophysical and biomolecular markers and establishing biophysical-biomolecular links. [148] It is also worthy to note that biophysical properties can be characterized in a label-free and non-destructive manner. This is advantageous because cells are not being destroyed, thus allowing for their continual use in downstream applications like in cellular therapies where biophysical properties can be used to sort between healthy and senescent cells.…”

Morphological profiling by high-throughput single-cell biophysical fractometry

“…Such complex-field information can then be harnessed to compute the corresponding far-field light scattering pattern (by means of Fourier Transform light scattering (FTLS) 27 ), which provides a catalogue of single-cell fractal and the associated ALS features. Defining these fractal features as an intrinsic morphological profile aligns precisely with the growing interest in new strategies for in-depth biophysical phenotyping of cells, that has already generated new mechanistic knowledge of cell heterogeneity and showed initial promises in identifying cost-effective biomarkers of disease, thanks to its label-free nature 28 . (2) Enabling large-scale single-cell fractometry by the ultrafast QPI operation in multi-ATOM, at the speed at least 100 times faster than the existing QPI modalities that rely on camera technology for image recording 29 .…”

Convergence of Liquid Metal Biotechnologies for Our Health

“…Inexpensive, multifunctional, and often tiny devices are widely distributed in practical scenarios. The convergence of LM multifunctionality and other technologies, such as brain–machine interface, artificial intelligence, high-throughput screening, and single-molecule analyses, might provide a new direction for transformative LM-based healthcare devices that can have high precision theranostic performance at single-cellular and single-molecular levels.…”