Implementation of Microfluidic Chip Electrophoresis for the Detection of B-cell Clonality

Abstract

Introduction: A clonal population of B-cells is defined as those cells arising from the mitotic division of a single somatic cell with the same rearrangement of immunoglobulin genes. This gives rise to DNA markers for each individual lymphoid cell and its progenies and enables us to study clonality in different B-cell malignancies using multiplex polymerase chain reaction - PCR. The BIOMED-2 protocol has been implemented for clonality detection in lymphoproliferative diseases and exploits multiplex PCR reaction, subsequently analyzed by heteroduplex analysis (HDA) using polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE). With the advent of miniaturization and automation of molecular biology methods, lab-on-chip technologies were developed and replace partially the conventional approaches. We tested device for microfluidic chip, which is used for B-cells clonality analysis, using a PCR reaction for three subregions called frameworks (FR) of the immunoglobulin heavy locus (IGH) gene.

Keywords

• b-cell clonality
• protocol biomed-2
• hda-page
• microfluidic chip electrophoresis