Fibre based cellular transfection

Tsampoula, X and Taguchi, K and Cizmar, T and Garces-Chavez, V and Ma, N and Mohanty, S and Mohanty, K and Gunn-Moore, F and Dholakia, K (2008) Fibre based cellular transfection. In: Optics Express, 16 (21). pp. 17007-17013.

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Abstract

Optically assisted transfection is emerging as a powerful and versatile method for the delivery of foreign therapeutic agents to cells at will. In particular the use of ultrashort pulse lasers has proved an important route to transiently permeating the cell membrane through a multiphoton process. Though optical transfection has been gaining wider usage to date, all incarnations of this technique have employed free space light beams. In this paper we demonstrate the first system to use fibre delivery for the optical transfection of cells. We engineer a standard optical fibre to generate an axicon tip with an enhanced intensity of the remote output field that delivers ultrashort (~ 800 fs) pulses without requiring the fibre to be placed in very close proximity to the cell sample. A theoretical model is also developed in order to predict the light propagation from axicon tipped and bare fibres, in both air and water environments. The model proves to be in good agreement with the experimental findings and can be used to establish the optimum fibre parameters for successful cellular transfection. We readily obtain efficiencies of up to 57 % which are comparable with free space transfection. This advance paves the way for optical transfection of tissue samples and endoscopic embodiments of this technique.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publication:	Optics Express
Publisher:	Optical Society of America
Additional Information:	Copyright of this article belongs to Optical Society of America.
Department/Centre:	Division of Physical & Mathematical Sciences > Physics
Date Deposited:	21 Jul 2009 10:20
Last Modified:	19 Sep 2010 04:57
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/17558

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