Microtoxicology by microfluidic instrumentation: a review

Abstract

Microtoxicology is concerned with the toxic effects of small amounts of substances. In this progress report, we discuss the application of small amounts of noxious substances for toxicological investigation in...

Screening microbiota for effects on host tissues

“…C. Timm, Warrick, et al, 2017), as microfluidic devices can improve throughput, can employ custom fabrication to enable coculture of organisms or improve environmental control, and can enable novel measurements while reducing cost and improving sensitivity (J. Cao et al, 2022;Tan & Toh, 2020;Valle et al, 2022). The results of our experiments show that the microfluidic device yields results similar to plate assays, but with increased sensitivity and using smaller reagent volumes.…”

“…Therefore, we developed a microfluidic device that can be used to screen sterile spent media from bacterial cultures for cytotoxic effects, similarly to our manual methods. Indeed, microfluidic assay development is increasingly important for microbiome studies (Hansen et al, 2016; A. C. Timm, Halsted, et al, 2017; A. C. Timm, Warrick, et al, 2017), as microfluidic devices can improve throughput, can employ custom fabrication to enable coculture of organisms or improve environmental control, and can enable novel measurements while reducing cost and improving sensitivity (J. Cao et al, 2022; Tan & Toh, 2020; Valle et al, 2022). The results of our experiments show that the microfluidic device yields results similar to plate assays, but with increased sensitivity and using smaller reagent volumes.…”

Under-oil open microfluidic systems for rapid phenotypic antimicrobial susceptibility testing

“…In the past decade, we have seen fast growing interest, effort, and investment in microfluidics-based phenotypic AST. 13–17 Compared to the standard AST systems aforementioned (Table 1), microfluidics-based phenotypic AST allows versatile manipulation/organization of small-volume bacterial niches ( e.g. , micro- and sub-micro liter) on a device with small footprint, improved and high-resolution optical access, high throughput and flexible detection panel design.…”

“…In the past decade, we have seen fast growing interest, effort, and investment in microfluidics-based phenotypic AST. [13][14][15][16][17] Compared to the standard AST systems aforementioned (Table 1), microfluidics-based phenotypic AST allows versatile manipulation/organization of small-volume bacterial niches (e.g., micro-and sub-micro liter) on a device with small footprint, improved and high-resolution optical access, high throughput and flexible detection panel design. Recently, Idelevich, E. A. et al developed a method named MALDI-TOF-MS-based direct-on-target microdroplet growth assay (DOT-MGA) allowing rapid phenotypic AST (<6 to 8 h) independently of the species-antibiotic agent combination as well as testing of different combinations in parallel.…”