Microfluidics for cell-based high throughput screening platforms—A review

• High throughput screening is a major instrument in drug discovery.
• This paper reviews the application of microfluidics to cell-based high throughput screening platforms.
• We describe different modes in microfluidic platforms for cell-based high throughput screening.
• We discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each screening mode.
• We also give a perspective of the future of microfluidics for cell-based high throughput screening platforms.

In the last decades, the basic techniques of microfluidics for the study of cells such as cell culture, cell separation, and cell lysis, have been well developed. Based on cell handling techniques, microfluidics has been widely applied in the field of PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction), immunoassays, organ-on-chip, stem cell research, and analysis and identification of circulating tumor cells. As a major step in drug discovery, high-throughput screening allows rapid analysis of thousands of chemical, biochemical, genetic or pharmacological tests in parallel. In this review, we summarize the application of microfluidics in cell-based high throughput screening. The screening methods mentioned in this paper include approaches using the perfusion flow mode, the droplet mode, and the microarray mode. We also discuss the future development of microfluidic based high throughput screening platform for drug discovery.

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