Microfluidics for manipulating cells

Abstract

Microfluidics, a toolbox comprising methods for precise manipulation of fluids at small length scales (micrometers to millimeters), has become useful for manipulating cells. Its uses range from dynamic management of cellular interactions to high-throughput screening of cells, and to precise analysis of chemical contents in single cells. Microfluidics demonstrates a completely new perspective and an excellent practical way to manipulate cells for solving various needs in biology and medicine. This review introduces and comments on recent achievements and challenges of using microfluidics to manipulate and analyze cells. It is believed that microfluidics will assume an even greater role in the mechanistic understanding of cell biology and, eventually, in clinical applications. Microfluidics possesses scale effects and other attractive properties, demonstrating great advantages in manipulating and analyzing cells. It demonstrates huge capability and potential to expedite both fundamental biology studies and clinical applications. This review presents current achievements and challenges as well as future directions, with focus on cell and microenvironment patterning, cell screening, and single-cell analysis. Copyright © 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.