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• Microfluidics-Based Analysis in Drug Testing

In order to help our clients maximize the infinite advantages brought by the microfluidic system, Creative Biolabs provides one-stop solution services for microfluidic drug testing. You may select a functional chip to build a rational drug research platform or use our mature and characterized organ chip for toxicity testing.

Microfluidic Devices for Drug Testing

The design, development and marketing of new drugs is a time-consuming and laborious process, small-molecule drugs often take more than ten years to be fully verified and evaluated. Microfluidic technology is capable of operating microliter or even nanoliter liquids to achieve precise control of the microenvironment and has become a convenient tool for drug development and research.

Drug testing refers to the analysis of toxicity, safety, physicochemical properties and pharmacokinetics in the preclinical stage. These critical drug evaluation parameters affect the safety of drugs in the body. Traditional models used for preclinical drug testing include in vitro models using cells and proteins as test objects and in vivo models mainly based on animal experiments. The cell culture system constructed in a two-dimensional environment completely negates the physiological events that occur in a three-dimensional environment, and the pathological models constructed in animals often cannot be translated into clinically effective research results. The most reliable primate models often require excessive resource tilt and experimental optimization. Microfluidic chips can manipulate experiments and output results at the micron or even submicron scale, providing miniaturized and efficient solutions for traditional drug testing. A well-constructed microfluidic organ chip provides the possibility of high throughput, short time and low cost for traditional animal experiments.

Fig. 1 Organ-on-chips are emerging as a novel option for drug testing.^1,4

Microfluidic Drug Testing System Based on Concentration Gradient or Droplet

Cells are subjected to continuous flow and concentration gradients of biomolecules in vivo, so drug toxicity screening often requires attention to the dependent cellular responses to different drug concentrations or fluid environments. Microfluidic chips achieve high-resolution spatial/temporal control of drug concentrations and rapidly analyze the dependence of cells on drug exposure. Cells encapsulated with hydrogels or microspheres can construct a more biomimetic three-dimensional co-culture microenvironment and be used for drug toxicity analysis.

Droplet-based microfluidic systems achieve high yield and controllable cell concentration, and complete multiple operations including cell encapsulation, droplet mixing, and on-chip incubation. Well-built digital microfluidics systems enable multiplexing of high-throughput assays and better detection of individuals or a few cells in response to drugs.

Fig 2. Microfluidic drug testing system based on droplet generator.^2,4

Organ-on-A-Chip

Organ-on-a-chip is a microfluidic research tool capable of simulating the activities and physiological responses of a single organ or several organs. It is worth noting that they are not exact replicas of human organs but transformed from specific organ structures, functions and dynamics. Organ chips allow the implantation of human-derived cells to reduce the species gap in animal models. Organ-on-a-chip provides a simple, cheap and effective possibility for drug screening, and can perform multiple tests including drug toxicity and pharmacokinetic analysis. The most commonly used organ chips include the liver, kidney, heart, lung, brain, etc. In order to better simulate the cross-connection between different tissues/organs and the drug response of multiple systems at the same time, multi-organ chips have also been extensively developed.

Related Services

Creative Biolabs is committed to providing our clients with the most stable and flexible microfluidic drug detection one-stop solution service. Our well-proved functional chip or organ chip products provide a rapid and cost-effective option for your downstream experiments. You may also entrust us to develop a microfluidic system that suits your experimental needs and functional expectations. Equipped with complete micro-manufacturing equipment and microfluidic technology platform, we will be your best choice for the development of the high-resolution, high-throughput, low-cost drug screening microfluidic platform. Please don't hesitate to contact us for any needs.

Published Data

The findings discussed in the articles related to microfluidics-based analysis in drug testing are presented.

1.    An automated microfluidic platform that enables combinatorial drug screening in tumor organoids.

Fig. 3 Automated microfluidic chip for 3D cellular and organoid culture and dynamical drug screening.^3,4

An innovative automated microfluidic chip that enables real-time analysis of organoids is presented. This chip enables high-throughput culture, stimulation, analysis, and harvesting of organoids and other 3D culture models under dynamic conditions. The system enables combinatorial and dynamic drug treatments of hundreds of cultures simultaneously. The chip is a double-layer chamber chip, including a three-dimensional culture chamber device and a multiplexer fluid control device, consisting of a 200-well array and an overlying fluid channel. This chip design allows dynamic programming of different culture conditions, enabling real-time screening of different sequences of drugs or signaling factors in parallel culture chambers. Additionally, the dynamic control of fluidic conditions empowers researchers to test thousands of drug stimuli within a single experimental setup.

References

1. Guo, Zhang, et al. " Multifunctional microfluidic chip for cancer diagnosis and treatment." Nanotheranostics 5.1 (2021): 73-89.
2. Regnault, Dheeman, et al. " Microfluidic devices for drug assays." High-Throughput 7.18 (2018): 3390
3. Schuster, Brooke, et al. "Automated microfluidic platform for dynamic and combinatorial drug screening of tumor organoids." Nature communications 11.1 (2020): 5271.
4. Distributed under Open Access license CC BY 4.0, without modification.

For Research Use Only. Not For Clinical Use.