Cancer remains the leading cause of death worldwide despite the enormous efforts that are made in the development of cancer biology and anticancer therapeutic treatment. Furthermore, recent studies ...in oncology have focused on the complex cancer metastatic process as metastatic disease contributes to more than 90% of tumor‐related death. In the metastatic process, isolation and analysis of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) play a vital role in diagnosis and prognosis of cancer patients at an early stage. To obtain relevant information on cancer metastasis and progression from CTCs, reliable approaches are required for CTC detection and isolation. Additionally, experimental platforms mimicking the tumor microenvironment in vitro give a better understanding of the metastatic microenvironment and antimetastatic drugs' screening. With the advancement of microfabrication and rapid prototyping, microfluidic techniques are now increasingly being exploited to study cancer metastasis as they allow precise control of fluids in small volume and rapid sample processing at relatively low cost and with high sensitivity. Recent advancements in microfluidic platforms utilized in various methods for CTCs' isolation and tumor models recapitulating the metastatic microenvironment (tumor‐on‐a‐chip) are comprehensively reviewed. Future perspectives on microfluidics for cancer metastasis are proposed.
Microfluidic techniques are now increasingly being exploited to investigate cancer metastasis as they allow precise control of fluid in small volume and rapid sample processing at relatively low cost and with high sensitivity. Recent developments in microfluidic platforms utilized in various methods for CTC isolation and tumor models recapitulating the metastatic microenvironment (tumor‐on‐a‐chip) are extensively discussed.
Discrete elements for 3D microfluidics Bhargava, Krisna C.; Thompson, Bryant; Malmstadt, Noah
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS,
10/2014, Letnik:
111, Številka:
42
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Microfluidic systems are rapidly becoming commonplace tools for high-precision materials synthesis, biochemical sample preparation, and biophysical analysis. Typically, microfluidic systems are ...constructed in monolithic form by means of microfabrication and, increasingly, by additive techniques. These methods restrict the design and assembly of truly complex systems by placing unnecessary emphasis on complete functional integration of operational elements in a planar environment. Here, we present a solution based on discrete elements that liberates designers to build large-scale microfluidic systems in three dimensions that are modular, diverse, and predictable by simple network analysis techniques. We develop a sample library of standardized components and connectors manufactured using stereolithography. We predict and validate the flow characteristics of these individual components to design and construct a tunable concentration gradient generator with a scalable number of parallel outputs. We show that these systems are rapidly reconfigurable by constructing three variations of a device for generating monodisperse microdroplets in two distinct size regimes and in a high-throughput mode by simple replacement of emulsifier subcircuits. Finally, we demonstrate the capability for active process monitoring by constructing an optical sensing element for detecting water droplets in a fluorocarbon stream and quantifying their size and frequency. By moving away from large-scale integration toward standardized discrete elements, we demonstrate the potential to reduce the practice of designing and assembling complex 3D microfluidic circuits to a methodology comparable to that found in the electronics industry.
Significance Microfluidic systems promise to improve the analysis and synthesis of materials, biological or otherwise, by lowering the required volume of fluid samples, offering a tightly controlled fluid-handling environment, and simultaneously integrating various chemical processes. To build these systems, designers depend on microfabrication techniques that restrict them to arranging their designs in two dimensions and completely fabricating their design in a single step. This study introduces modular, reconfigurable components containing fluidic and sensor elements adaptable to many different microfluidic circuits. These elements can be assembled to allow for 3D routing of channels. This assembly approach allows for the application of network analysis techniques like those used in classical electronic circuit design, facilitating the straightforward design of predictable flow systems.
Microfluidic devices offer automation and high-throughput screening, and operate at low volumes of consumables. Although microfluidics has the potential to reduce turnaround times and costs for ...analytical devices, particularly in medical, veterinary, and environmental sciences, this enabling technology has had limited diffusion into consumer products. This article analyzes the microfluidics market, identifies issues, and highlights successful commercialization strategies. Addressing niche markets and establishing compatibility with existing workflows will accelerate market penetration.
Recent advances in cellular profiling have demonstrated substantial heterogeneity in the behaviour of cells once deemed 'identical', challenging fundamental notions of cell 'type' and 'state'. Not ...surprisingly, these findings have elicited substantial interest in deeply characterizing the diversity, interrelationships and plasticity among cellular phenotypes. To explore these questions, experimental platforms are needed that can extensively and controllably profile many individual cells. Here, microfluidic structures - whether valve-, droplet- or nanowell-based - have an important role because they can facilitate easy capture and processing of single cells and their components, reducing labour and costs relative to conventional plate-based methods while also improving consistency. In this article, we review the current state-of-the-art methodologies with respect to microfluidics for mammalian single-cell 'omics' and discuss challenges and future opportunities.
Miniaturization has been the driving force of scientific and technological advances over recent decades. Recently, flexibility has gained significant interest, particularly in miniaturization ...approaches for biomedical devices, wearable sensing technologies, and drug delivery. Flexible microfluidics is an emerging area that impacts upon a range of research areas including chemistry, electronics, biology, and medicine. Various materials with flexibility and stretchability have been used in flexible microfluidics. Flexible microchannels allow for strong fluid-structure interactions. Thus, they behave in a different way from rigid microchannels with fluid passing through them. This unique behaviour introduces new characteristics that can be deployed in microfluidic applications and functions such as valving, pumping, mixing, and separation. To date, a specialised review of flexible microfluidics that considers both the fundamentals and applications is missing in the literature. This review aims to provide a comprehensive summary including: (i) Materials used for fabrication of flexible microfluidics, (ii) basics and roles of flexibility on microfluidic functions, (iii) applications of flexible microfluidics in wearable electronics and biology, and (iv) future perspectives of flexible microfluidics. The review provides researchers and engineers with an extensive and updated understanding of the principles and applications of flexible microfluidics.
Droplet-based single-cell RNA-seq has emerged as a powerful technique for massively parallel cellular profiling. While this approach offers the exciting promise to deconvolute cellular heterogeneity ...in diseased tissues, the lack of cost-effective and user-friendly instrumentation has hindered widespread adoption of droplet microfluidic techniques. To address this, we developed a 3D-printed, low-cost droplet microfluidic control instrument and deploy it in a clinical environment to perform single-cell transcriptome profiling of disaggregated synovial tissue from five rheumatoid arthritis patients. We sequence 20,387 single cells revealing 13 transcriptomically distinct clusters. These encompass an unsupervised draft atlas of the autoimmune infiltrate that contribute to disease biology. Additionally, we identify previously uncharacterized fibroblast subpopulations and discern their spatial location within the synovium. We envision that this instrument will have broad utility in both research and clinical settings, enabling low-cost and routine application of microfluidic techniques.
Here we present a simple and low‐cost production method to generate paper‐based microfluidic devices with wax for portable bioassay. The wax patterning method we introduced here included three ...different ways: (i) painting with a wax pen, (ii) printing with an inkjet printer followed by painting with a wax pen, (iii) printing by a wax printer directly. The whole process was easy to operate and could be finished within 5–10 min without the use of a clean room, UV lamp, organic solvent, etc. Horse radish peroxidase, BSA and glucose assays were conducted to verify the performance of wax‐patterned paper.
Liquid Metal–Based Soft Microfluidics Zhu, Lifei; Wang, Ben; Handschuh‐Wang, Stephan ...
Small (Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, Germany),
03/2020, Letnik:
16, Številka:
9
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Motivated by the increasing demand of wearable and soft electronics, liquid metal (LM)‐based microfluidics has been subjected to tremendous development in the past decade, especially in electronics, ...robotics, and related fields, due to the unique advantages of LMs that combines the conductivity and deformability all‐in‐one. LMs can be integrated as the core component into microfluidic systems in the form of either droplets/marbles or composites embedded by polymer materials with isotropic and anisotropic distribution. The LM microfluidic systems are found to have broad applications in deformable antennas, soft diodes, biomedical sensing chips, transient circuits, mechanically adaptive materials, etc. Herein, the recent progress in the development of LM‐based microfluidics and their potential applications are summarized. The current challenges toward industrial applications and future research orientation of this field are also summarized and discussed.
This review encompasses and summarizes the most recent progresses in the development of liquid metal–based microfluidics and their related applications. The current challenges toward industrial applications and future research orientation of this field are summarized and discussed.
Inertial microfluidic physics Amini, Hamed; Lee, Wonhee; Di Carlo, Dino
Lab on a chip,
08/2014, Letnik:
14, Številka:
15
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Microfluidics has experienced massive growth in the past two decades, and especially with advances in rapid prototyping researchers have explored a multitude of channel structures, fluid and particle ...mixtures, and integration with electrical and optical systems towards solving problems in healthcare, biological and chemical analysis, materials synthesis, and other emerging areas that can benefit from the scale, automation, or the unique physics of these systems. Inertial microfluidics, which relies on the unconventional use of fluid inertia in microfluidic platforms, is one of the emerging fields that make use of unique physical phenomena that are accessible in microscale patterned channels. Channel shapes that focus, concentrate, order, separate, transfer, and mix particles and fluids have been demonstrated, however physical underpinnings guiding these channel designs have been limited and much of the development has been based on experimentally-derived intuition. Here we aim to provide a deeper understanding of mechanisms and underlying physics in these systems which can lead to more effective and reliable designs with less iteration. To place the inertial effects into context we also discuss related fluid-induced forces present in particulate flows including forces due to non-Newtonian fluids, particle asymmetry, and particle deformability. We then highlight the inverse situation and describe the effect of the suspended particles acting on the fluid in a channel flow. Finally, we discuss the importance of structured channels, i.e. channels with boundary conditions that vary in the streamwise direction, and their potential as a means to achieve unprecedented three-dimensional control over fluid and particles in microchannels. Ultimately, we hope that an improved fundamental and quantitative understanding of inertial fluid dynamic effects can lead to unprecedented capabilities to program fluid and particle flow towards automation of biomedicine, materials synthesis, and chemical process control.
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