Cell therapy and diagnostics involves the intracellular delivery of biomolecules, and cell transfection is the method to achieve the same. Currently, three approaches are available for transfection; viral, chemical and physical. Compared to viral and chemical methods, physical approaches possess several advantages, specifically the light energy-based method, known as photoporation. It uses high-intensity light pulses to generate cell membrane pores, through which exogenous molecules can enter easily. By incorporating anisotropic gold nanomaterials, photoporation can be achieved at low-intensity light pulses. Using the conventional batch reactor method, it isn't easy to attain a controlled synthesis of nanomaterials with high reproducibility and monodispersity. In addition, exogenous molecular delivery using nanomaterials demands large production of nanocarriers, which is not possible using a conventional batch reactor due to poor mixing of different phases during synthesis and variation in reaction conditions. Therefore, I am proposing various microfluidic geometries for the controlled synthesis of anisotropic gold nanomaterials and their usage in intracellular delivery of exogenous molecules using infrared pulse laser. It has been successfully synthesized gold nanostars and bony shaped nanostructures in symmetric flow-focusing and T-junction microfluidic devices, respectively. Numerical investigations were used to optimize the flow parameters of the device and once the nanomaterials are synthesized, they were used to deliver biomolecules by incorporating photoporation. Microfluidic synthesized gold nanostars stimulated photoporation showed higher efficiency without compromising cell viability in delivering small to large sized biomolecules in various mammalian cells.

Keywords: microfluidics, anisotropic gold nanomaterials, cell therapy and diagnosis, photoporation, biomolecules