Microfluidic-based cell handling devices for biochemical applications

Abstract

Microfluidic-based cell handling techniques have become promising tools for biochemical applications, and many such techniques have been developed with the advancement of microfabrication technologies. A microfluidic-based platform used for biochemical analysis offers numerous benefits, including small sample consumption, massive parallelization, rapid analysis, and the capability for single-cell analysis, which are difficult to achieve in conventional cell handling methods on a large scale. It also exhibits precise spatial and temporal control of the local cellular microenvironments based on microfluidic networks in accordance to the unique fluidic phenomena of microfluidics. This review focuses on various cell handling methods that take advantage of microfluidics by classifying them in accordance to specific functions required for biochemical analyses, including (i) cell transfer, (ii) cell separation and sorting, (iii) cell immobilization, (iv) cell isolation and encapsulation, and (v) cell retrieval.