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Special Issue "Microfluidics and Lab-on-a-Chip Applications for Biosensing"

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A special issue of Micromachines (ISSN 2072-666X). This special issue belongs to the section "B：Biology and Biomedicine".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2021) | Viewed by 3844

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Laura Cerqueira
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SciProfiles

Guest Editor

LEPABE - Laboratory for Process Engineering, Environment, Biotechnology and Energy, Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, 4200-465 Porto, Portugal
Interests: biomedical engineering; food safety and biotechnology; microbiology; NAM-FISH; microfluidics; lab on a chip

Dr. João Mário Miranda
E-Mail Website

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Co-Guest Editor

Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias s/n, 4200-465 Porto, Portugal
Interests: microscale flow heat and mass transport; acoustic mixing; nanofluids; numerical simulations of boiling; biofouling; cell trapping; hemodynamics in micro and macroscales; biomimetic fluids; production of microparticles; two-phase flows in microdevices
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Microfluidics and the lab-on-a-chip concept have been found to be crucial for the integration, parallelization, and miniaturization of various tests with widespread application in pharmaceutical and life science research and environmental, industrial, and food safety areas. Introducing miniaturization will favor versatility, ease-of-use, time-to-result, and cost per test, hence benefitting both society and the business sector.

As an example, the coverage of this concept is well reflected in the point-of-care molecular diagnostic market due to their small dimensions, accuracy, low cost, low power consumption, and portability.

Therefore, this Special Issue seeks to showcase research papers and review articles focusing on lab-on-a-chip devices, namely by:

(1) The development of novel designs for miniaturization, microfluidic devices and biosensors, using technological advances in nanomaterials and microthecnologies;

(2) The integration in targeting applications, including, but not exclusively to nucleic acid analysis, drug delivery, point-of-care diagnostics, cellular and molecular detection, biotechnology, and engineering.

Dr. Laura Cerqueira
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 2000 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.

Keywords

Lab-on-a-chip
Point-of-care diagnostics
Nucleic acid analysis
Cellular and molecular detection
Microfluidics
Miniaturization

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

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Open AccessArticle

A Narrow Straight Microchannel Array for Analysis of Transiting Speed of Floating Cancer Cells

Jifeng Ren

Yi Liu

Wei Huang

and

Raymond H. W. Lam

Micromachines 2022, 13(2), 183; https://doi.org/10.3390/mi13020183 - 26 Jan 2022

Viewed by 925

Abstract

Investigating floating cells along a narrow microchannel (e.g., a blood vessel) for their transiting speeds and the corresponding roles of cell physical properties can deepen our understanding of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) metastasis via blood vessels. Many existing studies focus on the cell transiting process in blood vessel-like microchannels; further analytical studies are desired to summarize behaviors of the floating cell movement under different conditions. In this work, we perform a theoretical analysis to establish a relation between the transiting speed and key cell physical properties. We also conduct computational fluid dynamics simulation and microfluidic experiments to verify the theoretical model. This work reveals key cell physical properties and the channel configurations determining the transiting speed. The reported model can be applied to other works with various dimensions of microchannels as a more general way to evaluate the cancer cell metastasis ability with microfluidics. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Microfluidics and Lab-on-a-Chip Applications for Biosensing)

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Open AccessArticle

Non-Cavitation Targeted Microbubble-Mediated Single-Cell Sonoporation

and

Micromachines 2022, 13(1), 113; https://doi.org/10.3390/mi13010113 - 11 Jan 2022

Viewed by 397

Abstract

Sonoporation employs ultrasound accompanied by microbubble (MB) cavitation to induce the reversible disruption of cell membranes and has been exploited as a promising intracellular macromolecular delivery strategy. Due to the damage to cells resulting from strong cavitation, it is difficult to balance efficient delivery and high survival rates. In this paper, a traveling surface acoustic wave (TSAW) device, consisting of a TSAW chip and a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) channel, was designed to explore single-cell sonoporation using targeted microbubbles (TMBs) in a non-cavitation regime. A TSAW was applied to precisely manipulate the movement of the TMBs attached to MDA-MB-231 cells, leading to sonoporation at a single-cell level. The impact of input voltage and the number of TMBs on cell sonoporation was investigated. In addition, the physical mechanisms of bubble cavitation or the acoustic radiation force (ARF) for cell sonoporation were analyzed. The TMBs excited by an ARF directly propelled cell membrane deformation, leading to reversible perforation in the cell membrane. When two TMBs adhered to the cell surface and the input voltage was 350 mVpp, the cell sonoporation efficiency went up to 83%. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Microfluidics and Lab-on-a-Chip Applications for Biosensing)

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Open AccessArticle

A Rapid Digital PCR System with a Pressurized Thermal Cycler

and

Micromachines 2021, 12(12), 1562; https://doi.org/10.3390/mi12121562 - 15 Dec 2021

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 784

Abstract

We designed a silicon-based fast-generated static droplets array (SDA) chip and developed a rapid digital polymerase chain reaction (dPCR) detection platform that is easy to load samples for fluorescence monitoring. By using the direct scraping method for sample loading, a droplet array of 2704 microwells with each volume of about 0.785 nL can be easily realized. It was determined that the sample loading time was less than 10 s with very simple and efficient characteristics. In this platform, a pressurized thermal cycling device was first used to solve the evaporation problem usually encountered for dPCR experiments, which is critical to ensuring the successful amplification of templates at the nanoliter scale. We used a gradient dilution of the hepatitis B virus (HBV) plasmid as the target DNA for a dPCR reaction to test the feasibility of the dPCR chip. Our experimental results demonstrated that the dPCR chip could be used to quantitatively detect DNA molecules. Furthermore, the platform can measure the fluorescence intensity in real-time. To test the accuracy of the digital PCR system, we chose three-channel silicon-based chips to operate real-time fluorescent PCR experiments on this platform. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Microfluidics and Lab-on-a-Chip Applications for Biosensing)

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Review

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Open AccessReview

Microfluidic Platforms for the Isolation and Detection of Exosomes: A Brief Review

and

Muthukumaran Packirisamy

Micromachines 2022, 13(5), 730; https://doi.org/10.3390/mi13050730 - 30 Apr 2022

Viewed by 412

Abstract

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are a group of communication organelles enclosed by a phospholipid bilayer, secreted by all types of cells. The size of these vesicles ranges from 30 to 1000 nm, and they contain a myriad of compounds such as RNA, DNA, proteins, and lipids from their origin cells, offering a good source of biomarkers. Exosomes (30 to 100 nm) are a subset of EVs, and their importance in future medicine is beyond any doubt. However, the lack of efficient isolation and detection techniques hinders their practical applications as biomarkers. Versatile and cutting-edge platforms are required to detect and isolate exosomes selectively for further clinical analysis. This review paper focuses on lab-on-chip devices for capturing, detecting, and isolating extracellular vesicles. The first part of the paper discusses the main characteristics of different cell-derived vesicles, EV functions, and their clinical applications. In the second part, various microfluidic platforms suitable for the isolation and detection of exosomes are described, and their performance in terms of yield, sensitivity, and time of analysis is discussed. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Microfluidics and Lab-on-a-Chip Applications for Biosensing)

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Open AccessFeature PaperEditor’s ChoiceReview

Optical Whispering-Gallery-Mode Microbubble Sensors

and

Micromachines 2022, 13(4), 592; https://doi.org/10.3390/mi13040592 - 09 Apr 2022

Viewed by 590

Abstract

Whispering-gallery-mode (WGM) microbubble resonators are ideal optical sensors due to their high quality factor, small mode volume, high optical energy density, and geometry/design/structure (i.e., hollow microfluidic channels). When used in combination with microfluidic technologies, WGM microbubble resonators can be applied in chemical and biological sensing due to strong light–matter interactions. The detection of ultra-low concentrations over a large dynamic range is possible due to their high sensitivity, which has significance for environmental monitoring and applications in life-science. Furthermore, WGM microbubble resonators have also been widely used for physical sensing, such as to detect changes in temperature, stress, pressure, flow rate, magnetic field and ultrasound. In this article, we systematically review and summarize the sensing mechanisms, fabrication and packing methods, and various applications of optofluidic WGM microbubble resonators. The challenges of rapid production and practical applications of WGM microbubble resonators are also discussed. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Microfluidics and Lab-on-a-Chip Applications for Biosensing)

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