Next-generation microfluidic lab-on-a-chip platforms for point-of-care diagnostics and systems biology

AbstractLab-on-a-chip technologies have pervaded various fields of the life sciences including nucleic acid testing, immunoassays and cell screening. It has by now been clearly recognized that microfluidic liquid handling offers a unique approach to integrate, automate, parallelize and miniaturize assay formats, thus making it possible to port them from the lab bench to point of care settings. In systems biology, the interaction of cells with micromachined, scale-matched features also offers a new access to the cellular world. This presentation will survey a set of novel microfluidic lab-on-a-chip platforms in the fields of point-of-care diagnostics and systems biology. Important design parameters are low-complexity instrumentation and the amenability of the usually disposable cartridge for high volume polymer microfabrication