Microfluidic Cell Culture Systems for Drug Research

Abstract

The identification of new drugs and predicting drug responses to cancer patients are unprecedented challenges in pharmaceutical industry. Developing biologically relevant models of human tissues and organs is of vital importance for disease modeling and drug discovery. Microfluidic devices, with controllable chambers and channels in the micrometer range (10–1000 μm), are suitable for miniaturization analysis and they showed great promise as new and influential players in drug discovery. In this chapter, microfluidic technologies, which improve the efficiency of drug research at the microscale level, were summarized. To begin with, the attractive properties of lab-on-a-chip technology were described. Then, the development of three mainly microfluidic technologies were introduced and described in detail. Some practical applications of microfluidic-based, cell-culture systems in drug research particularly those pertaining to drug toxicity testing and those with a high-throughput capability are subsequently reviewed and highlighted. Finally, the challenges and opportunities in regard to numerous aspects of microfluidic system were discussed. It is believed that its excellent properties of miniaturization, high-throughput analysis, and highly integrated function, endows lab-on-a-chip device with great potential academic and commercial value in discovery and development of drug.