Abstract
Microfluidic technology has been highly useful in nanovolume sample preparation, separation, synthesis, purification, detection and assay, which are advantageous in drug development. This review highlights the recent developments and trends in microfluidic applications in two areas of drug development. First, we focus on how microfluidics has been developed as a facile tool for the fabrication of drug carriers including microparticles and nanoparticles. Second, we discuss how microfluidic chips could be used as an independent platform or integrated with other technologies in drug toxicity screening. Challenges and future perspectives of microfluidic applications in drug development have also been provided considering the present technological limitations.
Highlights
With the development of science and technology, the pharmaceutical industry has entered the development mode of innovation-oriented drugs
Drug toxicity affects the safety of drugs in vivo, and toxicity screening is a key step in drug evaluation
We summarized the recent developments of microfluidic applications in drug development, including fabrication of drug carriers and drug toxicity screening (Figure 1)
Summary
With the development of science and technology, the pharmaceutical industry has entered the development mode of innovation-oriented drugs. Microfluidics can accurately control and manipulate sub-millimeter fluids, which has advantages in the preparation of micro/nanoparticles and the construction of extracellular microenvironments [4] It has been progressively applied in the field of drug carrier development and drug toxicity screening. Microfluidic platforms were developed to address the challenges of cell-based drug screening, providing benefits such as reducing the volume of reagents required and developing a three-dimensional (3D) cell culture that is similar to the physiological/pathological microenvironment [1,20]. Concentration gradient microfluidic chips could achieve spatiotemporal control of drug concentration, which plays an important role in drug toxicity screening. We have briefly explained the microfluidic platforms used in drug toxicity screening, including the drug dilution generator, 3D cell coculture and organs-on-chips. The major limitations and challenges in this area and opinions on its future developments have been proposed
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