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Gregory Stephanopoulos and colleagues reply to Screening cellular metabolic activity

Nature Biotechnology volume 32, pages 1092–1093 (2014)Cite this article

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Gregory Stephanopoulos and colleagues reply:

El Debs and Merten1 contend that “this approach” (i.e., of an integrated microfluidic device described in our paper2 allowing the encapsulation of cells into droplets, which can be incubated, injected into a second device, fused and sorted) was not introduced by us. Furthermore, they claim that “the general concept of combining different droplet manipulation modules into a single, fully integrated, cell screening device was patented even earlier, with a priority date of July 13, 2007.” We rebut their claims on priority with the following timeline of events.

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References

  1. El Debs, B. & Merten, C.A. Nat. Biotechnol. 32, xx–xx (2014).

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  2. Wang, B.L. et al. Nat. Biotechnol. 32, 473–478 (2014).

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  3. Wang, B.L., Zhou, H., Weitz, D.A. & Stephanopoulos, G.N. Oral presentation at 2008 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, November 17, 2008.

  4. Wang, B.L., Zhou, H., Agresti, J., Weitz, D.A. & Stephanopoulos, G.N. Oral presentation at Metabolic Engineering VII: Health and Sustainability, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, September 17, 2008.

  5. Wang, B.L., Zhou, H., Weitz, D.A. & Stephanopoulos, G.N. Oral presentation at American Chemical Society 236th National Meeting, Philadelphia, August 19, 2008.

  6. Weitz, D.A. et al. Droplet-based selection. US patent application 20090068170 (2009).

  7. El Debs, B., Utharala, R., Balyasnikova, I.V., Griffiths, A.D. & Merten, C.A. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 109, 11570–11575 (2012).

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  8. Wang, B.L., Humphry, K., Weitz, D.A. & Stephanopoulos, G.N. Microfluidic droplets for metabolic engineering systems. US patent application 20100124759 (2010).

  9. Wang, B.L. High Throughput Screen for Cells with High Extracellular Metabolite Consumption/Secretion Rates Using Microfluidic Droplets. PhD thesis, MIT, Cambridge, MA, USA (2009).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), Genome Biology Unit, Meyerhofstrasse 1, Heidelberg, 69115, Germany

    Bachir el Debs, Ramesh Utharala & Christoph A Merten

Authors
  1. Bachir el Debs
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  2. Ramesh Utharala
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  3. Christoph A Merten
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christoph A Merten.

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The author declare no competing financial interests.

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el Debs, B., Utharala, R. & Merten, C. Gregory Stephanopoulos and colleagues reply to Screening cellular metabolic activity. Nat Biotechnol 32, 1092–1093 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.3059

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