A role for microfluidic systems in precision medicine

Precision oncology continues to challenge the “one-size-fits-all” dogma. Under the precision oncology banner, cancer patients are screened for molecular tumor alterations that predict treatment response, ideally leading to optimal treatments. Functional assays that directly evaluate treatment efficacy on the patient’s cells offer an alternative and complementary tool to improve the accuracy of precision oncology. Unfortunately, traditional Petri dish-based assays overlook much tumor complexity, limiting their potential as predictive functional biomarkers. Here, we review past applications of microfluidic systems for precision medicine and discuss the present and potential future role of functional microfluidic assays as treatment predictors.