Droplet microfluidics for high‐sensitivity and high‐throughput detection and screening of disease biomarkers

Abstract

Biomarkers are nucleic acids, proteins, single cells, or small molecules in human tissues or biological fluids whose reliable detection can be used to confirm or predict disease and disease states. Sensitive detection of biomarkers is therefore critical in a variety of applications including disease diagnostics, therapeutics, and drug screening. Unfortunately for many diseases, low abundance of biomarkers in human samples and low sample volumes render standard benchtop platforms like 96-well plates ineffective for reliable detection and screening. Discretization of bulk samples into a large number of small volumes (fL-nL) via droplet microfluidic technology offers a promising solution for high-sensitivity and high-throughput detection and screening of biomarkers. Several microfluidic strategies exist for high-throughput biomarker digitization into droplets, and these strategies have been utilized by numerous droplet platforms for nucleic acid, protein, and single-cell detection and screening. While the potential of droplet-based platforms has led to burgeoning interest in droplets, seamless integration of sample preparation technologies and automation of platforms from biological sample to answer remain critical components that can render these platforms useful in the clinical setting in the near future. This article is categorized under: Diagnostic Tools > Biosensing Diagnostic Tools > Diagnostic Nanodevices Therapeutic Approaches and Drug Discovery > Emerging Technologies Therapeutic Approaches and Drug Discovery > Nanomedicine for Infectious Disease.

Identification Hub Genes in Colorectal Cancer by Integrating Weighted Gene Co-Expression Network Analysis and Clinical Validation in vivo and vitro

“…The high-throughput platform and gene microarray analysis provide tools for investigating tumor markers (17,18). However, translating the information into a better biological understanding by conventional differential expression analysis remains a major challenge (19).…”

Droplets generation under different flow rates in T‐junction microchannel with a neck

“…Droplet-based microfluidics, which is a remarkable part of the microfluidic technology and has droplets with the volume down to picoliters inside, has attracted widespread attention and is significant in a broad range of applications, such as biochemical analyses, material syntheses, medical diagnostics and treatments. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] In the applications mentioned above, it is indispensable to generate droplets with the controllable size, which is as small and uniform as possible. Therefore, it is needed to understand the mechanism of droplet generation in various microfluidic devices.…”

Microfluidics for Biotechnology: Bridging Gaps to Foster Microfluidic Applications

“…In these devices, water-in-oil or oil-in-water droplets are generated at a controlled volume and speed. Small compartments provide the ability to screen cells or new enzymes in a high-throughput manner, comparable to FACS (fluorescent activated cell sorting) (Kaushik et al, 2018;Wang et al, 2019). The advantage of droplet-based enzyme screening is that the enzymes are encapsulated in a small environment, and thus even small product amounts are detectable, due to high local concentrations (Colin et al, 2015;Bornscheuer, 2016).…”