Microfluidic Cell Chips for High-Throughput Drug Screening

Abstract

The current state of screening methods for drug discovery is still riddled with several inefficiencies. Although some widely used high-throughput screening platforms may enhance the drug screening process, their cost and oversimplification of cell–drug interactions pose a translational difficulty. Microfluidic cell-chips resolve many issues found in conventional HTS technology, providing benefits such as reduced sample quantity and integration of 3D cell culture physically more representative of the physiological/pathological microenvironment. In this review, we introduce the advantages of microfluidic devices in drug screening, and outline the critical factors which influence device design, highlighting recent innovations and advances in the field including a summary of commercialization efforts on microfluidic cell chips. Future perspectives of microfluidic cell devices are also provided based on considerations of present technological limitations and translational barriers.

Keywords::

• high-throughput/content screening
• microfluidic cell chip
• physiological microenvironment

Financial & competing interests disclosure

This work was partially supported by NIH/NCI 1U54CA137788 (CCNY-MSKCC Partnership), NSF CBET-1055608, and Pershing Square Sohn Cancer Research Alliance. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

This work was partially supported by NIH/NCI 1U54CA137788 (CCNY-MSKCC Partnership), NSF CBET-1055608, and Pershing Square Sohn Cancer Research Alliance. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.