Chapter 17 - Microfluidics technology: past, present, and future prospects for biomarker diagnostics

Abstract

Recently, there is a growing demand for diagnostic technologies to provide quality devices for accurate detection of a wide range of diseases and cancers. Recent advances in micro- and nanoscience and especially microfluidic technologies have opened up the concept of the “lab-on-a-chip” (LOC) in the development of a new type of point-of-care diagnostic devices to enhance sensitivity and speed. Since the late 1980s, microfluidics has attracted great attention as one of the most important trends in bioanalytical instrumentation owing its unique features such as dealing with very small sample amounts and volumes (pL-nL), ability to process in short analysis times (min or s), automation, amenability to integration/multiplexing and high-throughput analysis, small foot-print, low cost, rather simple operations, disposability, and portability. Hence, the application of microfluidic devices in diagnosis, in particular, in diagnosis of cancer biomarker has quickly increased. Such microfluidic platforms are made of silicon or glass, and mainly paper or polymeric materials, which is suitable for a multitude of applications such as cancer immunodiagnostics, digital PCR, and nucleic acid testing. In this chapter, we focus on many of the recent advances in microfluidics and LOC technologies for application in medical diagnostics, especially in biomarker detection.