Microfluidics (Health application)

Using an axisymmetric flow-focusing microfluidic device, insulin was encapsulated in Eudragit® RS/Poly(-ε-caprolactone). The microcapsules were characterized by SEM, and drug release was determined by RP-HPLC.

μWesterns uniting protein sizing and aptamer probing in a single microfluidic platform was conducted. The precision and control offered by microfluidic integration and photoresponsive materials achieved advances not realized previously,

A low-cost, convenient, and precise drug combination screening microfluidic platform was developed, and cell culture chambers were designed with micropillars integrated with three laminar flow diffusion channels. This platform had several distinct features, including minimum shear stress on cells, biocompatibility, optimum concentration distribution, and automatic combinatorial gradient generation, which could potentially speed up the discovery of an effective drug combination for cancer ablations. The presented device could generate two-drug combination gradients at the optimum flow rate of 90 μL/h and could be applied to identify the optimal combination of two clinically relevant chemotherapy drugs. For demonstration, paclitaxel at 0.77 × 10−3 mg/mL and cisplatin at 0.23 × 10−4 mg/mL were studied against lung cancer cells (A549). This microfluidic device had the potential to provide a precise and robust screening for anticancer combinational drugs practiced in clinics. Read more

We introduced a cascaded microfluidic device consisting of two spiral channels and one zigzag channel designed with different fluid fields, including lift force, Dean drag force, and centrifugal force. Both red blood cells (RBCs)-lysed human blood spiked with CTCs and 1:50 diluted human whole blood spiked with CTCs were tested on the presented chip. This chip successfully separated RBCs, white blood cells (WBCs), and two different types of tumor cells (human lung cancer cells (A549) and human breast cancer cells (MCF-7)) simultaneously based on their physical properties. 80.75% of A549 and 73.75% of MCF-7 were faithfully separated from human whole blood. Furthermore, CTCs gathered from outlets could propagate and remain intact. The cell viability of A549 and MCF-7 were 95% and 98%, respectively. The entire separating process for CTCs from blood cells could be finished within 20 min. The cascaded microfluidic device introduced in this study is a novel platform for simultaneously isolating multiple types of CTCs from patient blood. Read more