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The impact of microfluidics in high-throughput drug-screening applications

Drug discovery is an expensive and lengthy process. Among the different phases, drug discovery and preclinical trials play an important role as only 5–10 of all drugs that begin preclinical tests proceed to clinical trials. Indeed, current high-throughput screening technologies are very expensive, a...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: De Stefano, Paola, Bianchi, Elena, Dubini, Gabriele
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: AIP Publishing LLC 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9142169/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35646223
http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/5.0087294
Descripción
Sumario:Drug discovery is an expensive and lengthy process. Among the different phases, drug discovery and preclinical trials play an important role as only 5–10 of all drugs that begin preclinical tests proceed to clinical trials. Indeed, current high-throughput screening technologies are very expensive, as they are unable to dispense small liquid volumes in an accurate and quick way. Moreover, despite being simple and fast, drug screening assays are usually performed under static conditions, thus failing to recapitulate tissue-specific architecture and biomechanical cues present in vivo even in the case of 3D models. On the contrary, microfluidics might offer a more rapid and cost-effective alternative. Although considered incompatible with high-throughput systems for years, technological advancements have demonstrated how this gap is rapidly reducing. In this Review, we want to further outline the role of microfluidics in high-throughput drug screening applications by looking at the multiple strategies for cell seeding, compartmentalization, continuous flow, stimuli administration (e.g., drug gradients or shear stresses), and single-cell analyses.