Microfluidic Platforms for the Detection of Disease Biomarkers

Abstract

Biomarkers, which can be obtained from different sources including blood, tissues, body fluids, and urine, can be evaluated to indicate normal, pathogenic, or therapeutic response to biological system. Early detection of biomarkers not only prevent the spread of infectious disease but also drastically decrease the death rate of people suffering from different diseases, especially in rural areas where financial resources are limited. Low cost microfluidic technologies have applications in human health diagnosis, food safety, and environmental analysis. This article briefly reviews different kinds of microfluidic platforms including paper, polymer, and hybrid platforms as a microfluidic biosensor for the detection of disease biomarkers. It also discusses the current limitations and future prospects. Keywords:

Trends and challenges in microfluidic methods for protein manipulation—A review

“…Microfluidics has been growing as a research field and entrepreneurial venue in the last decades [7][8][9][10] because it allows developing lab-on-a-chip (LoC) devices, including point-of-care (POC) platforms [10][11][12]. The ability of microfluidic systems to operate at the micro-and nanoscale makes them ideal to manipulate (e.g., separate, concentrate, and analyze) proteins, enabling the use of low-volume samples, reducing reagent consumption, and achieving extremely low limits of detection with high sensitivity and selectivity [13,14]. In this review, we explore EP, electroosmotic flow (EOF), dielectrophoresis (DEP), magnetophoresis (MGP), liquid chromatography (LC), liquid-liquid extraction (LLE), acoustophoresis (AP), inertial microfluidics (IM), and paper-based microfluidics (PBM), as actuation techniques for protein sample handling in microfluidics.…”