Micro-Engineered Systems for Drug Discovery and Single-Cell Analysis

Dear Colleagues,

The development of new biomedicine requires a better modeling and understanding of human physiology and pathophysiology. Animal models and conventional tissue culture models fail to recapitulate key elements of the human tissue and organ microenvironments. Micro-engineering technologies are well suited to recapitulating the length-scale phenomena of human tissue and organ systems at the subcellular, cellular and tissue levels, and are easy to interface with single-cell technologies. The utility of lithography, microfluidics, micropatterning, and rapid prototyping approaches such as 3D printing and micro-milling has enabled biomimicry of the biophysical and biochemical characteristics of the in vivo systems. The low-volume operations have allowed for unprecedented single-cell omics (e.g., transcriptomic, proteomic, and metabolomic) readouts that help obtain a comprehensive understanding of the heterogeneous responses of human systems to therapeutics. These advantages can translate into a more rapid development of humanly relevant and/or personalized medicine to treat various diseases. As such, this Special Issue seeks to showcase research papers and review articles that focus on (1) the development of new micro-engineered systems for mimicking human cell/tissue/organ microenvironments, (2) the application of micro-engineered systems for drug, biological or cellular therapeutic discoveries, and (3) interfacing micro-engineered systems for single-cell analysis.

Prof. Dr. Keyue Shen
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Micromachines is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• microfabrication
• microphysiological systems
• microfluidics
• rapid prototyping
• 3-D printing, micro-milling
• micropatterning
• tissue engineering
• cell/tissue/organ microenvironments
• therapeutic screening
• single-cell techniques