Evaluation of Surface Treatments of PDMS Microfluidic Devices for Improving Small-Molecule Recovery with Application to Monitoring Metabolites Secreted from Islets of Langerhans

Microfluidic devices are becoming an important tool for bioanalysis with applications including studying cell secretion, cell growth, and drug delivery. Small molecules such as drugs, cell products, or nutrients may partition into polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), a commonly used material for microfluidic devices, potentially leading to poor recovery or inaccurate delivery of such chemicals. To decrease small-molecule partitioning, surface and bulk PDMS treatments have been developed; however, these have been tested on few analytes, or their biocompatibility are unknown. Studies often focus on one analyte, whereas a diversity of chemicals are of interest and possibly affected. In this study, 11 device treatments are tested and applied to 21 biologically relevant small molecules with a variety of chemical structures. Device treatments are characterized using water contact angle measurements and evaluated by measuring recovery of the 21 target analytes using liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry. 1,5-Dimethyl-1,5-diazaundecamethylene polymethobromide (polybrene), a positively charged polymer, produced the least hydrophilic surface and was found to provide the best recovery with most of the analytes having >50% recovery and up to 92% recovery; however, recovery varied by analyte highlighting the importance of analyte diversity rather than targeting a single analyte in evaluating treatments. A polybrene-treated device was applied to investigate secretion from pancreatic islets, which are micro-organs involved in glucose homeostasis and diabetes. Islets secrete small molecules that have been shown to modulate the secretion of islets’ main functional products, glucose-regulating hormones. The polybrene treatment enabled the detection of 20 target analytes from islets-on-chip during isosmotic and hypo-osmotic glucose perfusions and resulted in detection of more significant secretion changes compared to untreated PDMS.