Abstract
In this review, we give an overview of the current state of microfluidic-based high-throughput drug assays. In this highly interdisciplinary research field, various approaches have been applied to high-throughput drug screening, including microtiter plate, droplets microfluidics as well as continuous flow, diffusion and concentration gradients-based microfluidic drug assays. Therefore, we reviewed over 100 recent publications in the field and sorted them according to their microfluidic approach. As a result, we are showcasing, comparing and discussing broadly applied approaches as well as singular promising ones that might contribute to shaping the future of this field.
Highlights
Microfluidics is a field of science studying fluids on a microscopic scale
While we do present a short introduction into the field, this review focuses on microfluidic drug assays with the most noteworthy developments in the recent years
The traditional well-plate-based drug assays are still widely used in industry, thanks to standardized formats that enable automated handling
Summary
Microfluidics is a field of science studying fluids (i.e., liquids and gasses) on a microscopic scale. Fluids are confined in devices that have a significant dimension (e.g., the height or the width) on the micrometer scale. Due to this extreme confinement, the volumes used for drug assays and similar studies are tiny (milliliters to femtoliters), and special physics apply. In a microfluidic device there are only laminar flows and no turbulences, which grants an extremely high control over the fluids employed, diffusion of drugs and the progress of reactions. While we do present a short introduction into the field, this review focuses on microfluidic (high-throughput) drug assays with the most noteworthy developments in the recent years. We would like to point interested reader towards several germane publications that give an in-depth dive into the field of microfluidics [1] and its drug-related applications [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]
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