Publications by Christoph Merten

Device and method for producing a combinatorial microcompartment within a carrier phase

The present disclosure provides a method and a microfluidic device for producing one or more combinatorial microcompartment comprising at least two sample species within a carrier phase, the microfluidic device comprising a target channel, a first sample s ...

2024

Fluorometer system, fluorescene analysis method, and use thereof

Christoph Merten, Jatin Panwar

The invention relates to a fluorometer system for analyzing fluid samples comprising a plurality of particles capable of being labeled with at least two fluorescent labels, in particular two distinct fluorophores. The invention also relates to a fluorescen ...

2024

Improved microfluidic transcriptome based screening methods

Christoph Merten, Leonie Kolmar, Xiaoli Ma, Hongxing Hu

The invention provides microfluidic screening systems for the identification of compounds or compositions influencing cellular transcriptomes. The invention is predicated upon taking into account differences in newly synthesized mRNA in contrast to so call ...

2024

Fluorescence-activated droplet sequencing (FAD-seq) directly provides sequences of screening hits in antibody discovery

Christoph Merten, Alexis Louis Autour

Droplet microfluidics has become a very powerful tool in high-throughput screening, including antibody discovery. Screens are usually carried out by physically sorting droplets hosting cells of the desired phenotype, breaking them, recovering the encapsula ...

National Academy of Sciences2024

Design and construction of a microfluidics workstation for high-throughput multi-wavelength fluorescence and transmittance activated droplet analysis and sorting

Christoph Merten, Jatin Panwar, Alexis Louis Autour

Droplet microfluidics has revolutionized quantitative high-throughput bioassays and screening, especially in the field of single-cell analysis where applications include cell characterization, antibody discovery and directed evolution. However, droplet mic ...

NATURE PORTFOLIO2023

Fluorescence crosstalk reduction by modulated excitation-synchronous acquisition for multispectral analysis in high-throughput droplet microfluidics

Christoph Merten, Jatin Panwar

Crosstalk between fluorescent biomarkers significantly limits the resolution of multispectral fluorescence analysis in real-time droplet-microfluidics applications. The crosstalk is a result of overlapping emission and excitation spectra of different fluor ...

ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY2023

iSort enables automated complex microfluidic droplet sorting in an effort to democratize technology

Christoph Merten, Jatin Panwar

Fluorescence-activated droplet sorting (FADS) is a widely used microfluidic technique for high-throughput screening. However, it requires highly trained specialists to determine optimal sorting parameters, and this results in a large combinatorial space th ...

CELL PRESS2023

Screening for drivers of SARS-CoV-2 uptake

Christoph Merten, Alexis Louis Autour

Genetic and cellular drivers of the cellular uptake of SARS-CoV-2 can be screened at high throughput via droplet microfluidics and size-exclusion methods for the analysis of the formation of fusions between cells expressing the virus's spike protein and ce ...

Nature Portfolio2023

Method for hormone or drug screening in a tissue sample

Cathrin Brisken, Yueyun Zhang, Christoph Merten

The present invention relates to a method for analyzing cellular responsiveness to hormones or drags in a tissue sample based on an alginate-based 3D ex vivo culture system for normal and malignant tissue microstructures and uses thereof. ...

2023

Automated droplet manipulation in microfluidic systems

Christoph Merten, Jatin Panwar

Disclosed herein is a method of operating a microfluidic system, a microfluidic system for manipulating sample objects, and a control system for operating a microfluidic system. The method according to the invention is for operating a microfluidic system t ...

2023

A microfluidic Braille valve platform for on-demand production, combinatorial screening and sorting of chemically distinct droplets

Wenwei Ma, Christoph Merten, Vida Vafaizadeh

Droplet microfluidics is a powerful tool for a variety of biological applications including single-cell genetics, antibody discovery and directed evolution. All these applications make use of genetic libraries, illustrating the difficulty of generating che ...

NATURE PORTFOLIO2022

Technological and computational advances driving high-throughput oncology

Christoph Merten, Leonie Kolmar, Alexis Louis Autour, Blandine Anne Catherine Vergier, Xiaoli Ma

Engineering and computational advances have opened many new avenues in cancer research, particularly when being exploited in interdisciplinary approaches. For example, the combination of microfluidics, novel sequencing technologies, and computational analy ...

ELSEVIER SCIENCE LONDON2022

Quantification of successful encapsulation into microfluidic compartments

Christoph Merten

The invention provides a method for quantifying the number of target entities that were successfully encapsulated into a microfluidic compartment such as a microfluidic droplet. The invention is predicated upon a continuous quantifiable detectable signal c ...

2022

Differential contribution of nuclear size scaling mechanisms between Xenopus species

Christoph Merten

Size of the nucleus, a membrane-bound organelle for DNA replication and transcription in eukaryotic cells, varies to adapt nuclear functions to the surrounding environment. Nuclear size strongly correlates with cytoplasmic size and genomic content. Previou ...

2022

Combi-seq for multiplexed transcriptome-based profiling of drug combinations using deterministic barcoding in single-cell droplets

Ngoc Hien Du, Christoph Merten

Anti-cancer therapies often exhibit only short-term effects. Tumors typically develop drug resistance causing relapses that might be tackled with drug combinations. Identification of the right combination is challenging and would benefit from high-content, ...

Nature Research2022