Recent Developments in Microfluidic Chip for in vitro Cell-based Research

Microfluidic technology has become a powerful tool in cell-based research due to its inherent advantages. The research progress of cell culture on chips, simulation and manipulation of cell microenvironment on chips, single cell analysis on chips, organ-on-a-chip, and chip-mass spectrometry was introduced in this review. The prospect of microfluidic technology in cell-based researches was discussed to give some insights for researchers who were interested in developing microfluidic platforms for cell-based research.

Graphical abstractMicrofluidic chips, which could integrate several functional units, such as drug injection, bioreactor, sample separation and online detection on a single platform, exhibit promising applications in constructing models for in vitro cell-related researches. Especially, the Chip-MS technology becomes a powerful and sensitive way in metabolite detection and cell analysis.Figure optionsDownload full-size imageDownload as PowerPoint slide