Recent advances in microfluidic technology and applications for anti-cancer drug screening

Abstract

To accelerate the discovery of anti-cancer drugs, there is an urgent need to establish an inexpensive and simple preclinical model that can simulate the tumor microenvironment and screen the drug candidates. Some widely used screening platforms are high-cost and over-simple to verify the cell-drug interactions for predicting human clinical trial outcomes. As a promising technology, microfluidic chip can replace traditional screening methods due to low reagent consumption and the capability of recapitulating the 3D cell culture more representative of the native tumor microenvironment. This review covers the materials for microchip fabrication (especially hydrogel), tumor microenvironment, 2D and 3D tumor culture on chips, drug screening methods (concentration gradient generator-based, microdroplet-based, microarray-based chips, and tumor tissue chip), and their pros and cons for cancer treatment. We also discuss the future development of microfluidic for anti-cancer drug discovery research.