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  • Review Article
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Revisiting lab-on-a-chip technology for drug discovery

Nature Reviews Drug Discovery volume 11, pages 620–632 (2012)Cite this article

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Key Points

  • Recent progress in lab-on-a-chip (LOC) technology and microfluidics is reviewed in this article, with a special focus on drug discovery.

  • We introduce relevant scaling laws, together with the means by which the use of LOC technology could be advantageous.

  • We discuss the origin of microfluidics and its benefits compare to conventional approaches.

  • We discuss microfluidic techniques such as droplet microfluidics and patch clamp techniques, as well as their applications in drug discovery

  • The applications of microfluidic techniques include measurements of enzyme activity and kinetics, drug–protein interactions, DNA synthesis and protein expression.

  • Microfluidics can also be used for three-dimensional cell culturing, the development of organs-on-a-chip, as well as for the analysis of animals-on-a chip.

Abstract

The field of microfluidics or lab-on-a-chip technology aims to improve and extend the possibilities of bioassays, cell biology and biomedical research based on the idea of miniaturization. Microfluidic systems allow more accurate modelling of physiological situations for both fundamental research and drug development, and enable systematic high-volume testing for various aspects of drug discovery. Microfluidic systems are in development that not only model biological environments but also physically mimic biological tissues and organs; such 'organs on a chip' could have an important role in expediting early stages of drug discovery and help reduce reliance on animal testing. This Review highlights the latest lab-on-a-chip technologies for drug discovery and discusses the potential for future developments in this field.

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Figure 1: Droplet-based microfluidics.
Figure 2: Parallelized synthesis of oligonucleotides on a chip.
Figure 3: Microfluidic array to order and vertically orient Drosophila melanogaster embryos with a high throughput.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Korea Institute of Science and Technology and the US National Institutes of Health (Director's New Innovator Award: 1DP2OD007209-01). The authors thank B. Kiraly, F. Guo and an anonymous peer reviewer for helpful discussions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Korean Institute of Science and Technology in Europe (KIST Europe GmbH), Campus E71, Saarbrücken, 66123, Germany

    Pavel Neužil & Andreas Manz

  2. Central European Institute of Technology, Brno University of Technology, Technick 3058/10, Brno, 616 00, Czech Republic

    Pavel Neužil

  3. Institute for Biological Interfaces-1 (IBG-1), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Hermann-von-Helmholtz-Platz 1, Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, D-76344, Germany

    Stefan Giselbrecht

  4. Institute of Microstructure Technology, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Hermann-von-Helmholtz-Platz 1, Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, D-76344, Germany

    Kerstin Länge

  5. Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics, Pennsylvania State University, N-330 Millennium Science Complex, University Park, 16802, Pennsylvania, USA

    Tony Jun Huang

  6. Center for BioMicrosystems, Korea Institute of Science and Technology, Hwaragno 14-gil 5 Seongbuk-gu, Seoul, 136–791, Korea

    Andreas Manz

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Neužil, P., Giselbrecht, S., Länge, K. et al. Revisiting lab-on-a-chip technology for drug discovery. Nat Rev Drug Discov 11, 620–632 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrd3799

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