Themed collection Lab on a Chip HOT Articles 2023

A molecular robot, which is a system comprised of one or more molecular machines and computers, can execute sophisticated tasks in many fields that span from nanomedicine to green nanotechnology.

We explore how artificial cells and tissues could be designed, manufactured on-chip and 3D printed for use in place of ex vivo animal tissues when screening cosmetics for dermal absorption.

We describe how lab-on-a-chip systems can help address challenges in: (I) carbon sequestration, (II) hydrogen storage, (III) geothermal energy extraction, (IV) bioenergy, (V) recovering critical materials, and (VI) water filtration and remediation.

We argue that the introduction of high-frequency, real-time biosensors into LoCs could be used to establish high-value feed-back control functionalities.

Will miniaturised flow reactors initiate a new paradigm for a more localized, safe and reliable chemical production to overcome current crises?

This tutorial review has comprehensively discussed the design of microfluidic device to integrate SERS with it, and addressed the key features and challenges of the integrated platform in the study of cancer-derived small extracellular vesicles (sEVs).

A step-by-step guide for the design and analysis of 2D microfluidic technologies.

We review innovations in digital protein detection that has greatly improved the sensitivity of immunoassays and their impact on biomedicine.

Organotropism is an important concept to explain the process of cancer metastasis. In this paper, we introduce microphysiological systems with simultaneous physiological relevance and high throughput to recapitulate the series of cancer progression.

Islet-on-a-chip devices have the power to measure pancreatic islet metabolism from donor and engineered islets. These measurements could be used to determine healthy islets for the treatment of type 1 diabetes.

This review introduces the development of droplet microfluidics by explaining the physical mechanisms of droplet generation, discussing various approaches in manipulating droplets, and summarizing key applications in material science and biological analyses.

Integration of smart miniaturized nanosensors with artificial intelligence results in precise detection of pathogenic bacteria or viruses in biological samples.

Micro-/nanorobotics has attracted extensive interest from a variety of research communities, witnessing enormous progress in applications ranging from basic research to global healthcare and even environmental remediation and protection.

Hydraulic–electric analogy enables the design and operation of microfluidic circuits with minimal requirement of external control equipment.

This critical review addresses recent developments in integrated microfluidic technologies for cancer detection with an emphasis on three common subtypes of cancer biomarkers: circulating tumor cells, circulating tumor DNA and exosomes.

This review summarizes the implementations of droplet microfluidics based on AI, including droplet generation, biological analysis, and material synthesis.

Microfluidics offers great potential as an enabling technological platform for the burgeoning field of DNA data storage, making critical contributions to improving the performance in data processing, as well as system integration and automation.

Representation of the influence of biological and nanoscale factors on protein corona conformation and function in a healthy versus a pathogenic biological environment.

Review work on the challenges of paper-based NAATs covering sample-to-answer procedures along with the three main types of clinical samples as well as broader operational, scale up, and regulatory aspects of device development and implementation.

In this review, we overview designs and applications of microfluidics-based human mini-brains for reconstituting CNS disorders and expanded model systems ranging from the CNS to CNS-connecting organ axes with future perspectives.

This review covers the working mechanisms, recent progress and state-of-the-art applications of microrobots driven by optical and magnetic fields.

We discuss the recent trends in integrating deep-learning (DL) and optofluidic imaging. A holistic understanding of them could incentivize DL-powered optofluidic imaging for advancing a wide range of novel applications in science and biomedicine.

We review recent advances in CRISPR-based nucleic acid detection using microfluidic devices and discuss the capabilities, limitations, and potential of this emerging technology.

This paper comprehensively studies the latest progress in microfluidic technology for submicron and nanoparticle manipulation by elaborating on the physics, device design, working mechanism and applications of microfluidic technologies.

Combining microfluidics with existing techniques allows for novel and more high-throughput measurements of the thermodynamics, kinetics and characteristics of biomolecular condensates.

A simple, cost-effective approach for fabricating soft microstring chips that enables precise engineering of tension tissues (METTs), advancing research in mechanobiology and biomedical applications.

A portable centrifugal microfluidic device was developed that integrates nucleic acid purification, amplification and CRISPR detection for one-step rapid multiplex diagnosis of infectious diseases in resource-limited settings.

With high system integration, the process of droplet generation, PCR amplification, and detection of the DropXpert S6 system is completed on one chip, showing high precision and sensitivity in CML patients.

Dynamic fluid–solid interactions in nanoporous materials underlie processes fundamental to natural and engineered processes, the resolution of which has remained elusive until now.

A microfluidic particle counter for visualizing mucosal antibody levels against SARS-CoV-2 in the upper respiratory tract for rapid evaluation of immune protection.

We use hyperbolic microchannels to create a flow field with linearly increasing velocity, leading to a constant tensile stress to probe the viscoelastic properties of cells. We verify our approach on oil droplets and polyacrylamide beads.

Arrays of parallel droplet reactions enable high-speed optimization, and discovered conditions can be immediately scaled for use on conventional instruments.

Cellular arrangements with diverse patterns and positional relationships are obtained simultaneously and contactlessly by quasi-periodic acoustic tweezers for differentiation guidance.

LoCKAmp: integrated LAMP genetic amplification device demonstrating reliable detection and ultrafast sample-to-answer time.

Magnetofluid-integrated biosensors based on DNase-dead Cas12a termed “up and down chip” was established for visual point-of-care testing of HIV-1.

The intelligence of viruses is unveiled in this study utilizing a distal renal tubular system-on-a-chip, demonstrating their ability to rapidly spread through tissues.

Micro X-ray fluorescence produces elemental images at μm resolution and offers insight into rock properties such as mineral composition and structure. This study presents a porosity mapping method using microfluidic devices and real-rock models.

By controlling scratching with phase differences and post-selective etching, a misaligned sine micromixer was achieved with higher mixing efficiency.

An array of protruding cantilever microelectrodes has been developed to measure the inner electrical activity of a cerebral organoid grown from human embryonic stem cells.

A novel microfluidic device capable of controlling the contact between single beads or cells is presented and its capabilities are demonstrated with an adhesion assays and specific interactions between T-cells and tumor cells.

SpectIR-fluidics merges any microfluidic design with sensitive ATR-FTIR. The sensor integration within the larger device enables complete freedom for fluidic connections, opening the way for high throughput point of application assays and more.

We present a microphysiological system with the unique ability to combine perfusion, regulation of oxygen tension, and mechanical loading to culture bone tissue constructs under physiological conditions.

TBI-on-a-chip incorporates simultaneous morphological and electrophysiological monitoring of neuronal networks subjected to clinically-relevant impact injuries to investigate primary and secondary injuries, including trauma induced neurodegeneration.

A 3D-printed modular droplet injector successfully delivered microcrystals of human NAD(P)H:quinone oxidoreductase 1 (NQO1) and phycocyanin with electrical stimulation in a serial crystallography experiment at 120 Hz repetition rate.

We demonstrate a bioengineered humanized BCSFB model on a microfluidic device. This model recapitulates structural and functional features of BCSFB in both physiological and neuroinflammatory situations, and may be a potential tool for BCSFB study.

A centrifugal droplet digital protein detection technology that combines miniaturized centrifugal droplet generation devices with digital immuno-PCR assays, achieving a femtomolar limit of detection of target proteins in sub-microliters of plasma.

CeLab enables high-throughput C. elegans lifespans, reproductive spans, progeny count assays and body size measurements. Adult treatment of metformin at low dose increases RS, and the nutrient-sensing mTOR pathway mutant sgk-1 reproduces until death.

We report the coupling of dynamic light scattering (DLS) in microfluidics, using a contact-free fibre-optic system, enabling the under-flow characterisation of a range of solutions, dispersions, and structured fluids.

We describe a microfluidic approach to print double emulsions on demand in air, allowing each double emulsion droplet to be printed with the desired inner cores.

Two newly developed quantitative chambers, multi-compartmental quantitative bipartite chamber (MQBC) and long quantitative tripartite chamber (LQTC), could dramatically increase the efficiency in collecting axonal RNA.

It offers a new strategy for the fabrication of functionalized structures for a variety of bionic tissue models.

A fully integrated microfluidic system to automatically detect blood samples and determine the genetic polymorphisms associated with folic acid metabolism in a “sample in-answer out” style.

We present a novel nonlinear microfluidic cell stretching (μ-cell stretcher) platform that leverages viscoelastic fluids, i.e., methylcellulose (MC) solutions, and cell mechanoporation for highly efficient and robust intracellular mRNA delivery.

Rapid construction of size-controllable 3D tumor spheroid arrays based on acoustic bubbles in microfluidic chips for in situ drug response testing.

A reverse-engineered systems biology framework of directed cell migration in which cells function as a ternary logic gate to decode entangled chemical and fluidic cues to determine migration direction.

A microfluidic ratiometric detection scheme using silica nanoparticles coated with a “light-up” fluorescent molecularly imprinted polymer allows selective rapid assaying of pY-terminating peptides after in-tube/on-chip derivatisation and extraction.

A low-cost, user friendly 2DPN for cervical cancer screening was developed and validated for detection of high-risk HPV DNA in clinical samples.

Optofluidic imaging on a chip is developed for studying the efficacy of antiplatelet drugs on atherosclerosis.

Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) is widely employed for detecting target molecules in bioassays including the serological assays that measure specific antibody titers.

Integration of photonic sensors with tissue chips (TCs; also known as microphysiological systems or organ chips) enables real time monitoring of analytes produced by the TC or passed through a model tissue barrier.