Johns Hopkins University, Department of Biomedical Engineering, 3400 N. Charles St., Baltimore, MD 21218, USA.
Expert Opin Drug Discov. 2010 Aug;5(8):715-20. doi: 10.1517/17460441.2010.495116.
Miniaturization is the key to advancing the state of the art in high-content screening (HCS) in order to enable dramatic cost savings through reduced usage of expensive biochemical reagents and to enable large-scale screening on primary cells. Microfluidic technology offers the potential to enable HCS to be performed with an unprecedented degree of miniaturization.
This perspective highlights a real-world example from the authors’ work of HCS assays implemented in a highly miniaturized microfluidic format. The advantages of this technology are discussed, including cost savings, high-throughput screening on primary cells, improved accuracy, the ability to study complex time-varying stimuli, and ease of automation, integration and scaling.
The reader will understand the capabilities of anew microfluidics-based platform for HCS and the advantages it provides over conventional plate-based HCS.
Microfluidics technology will drive significant advancements and broader usage and applicability of HCS in drug discovery.
微型化是推进高内涵筛选（HCS）技术发展的关键，以便通过减少昂贵生化试剂的使用来实现显著的成本节约，并能够在原代细胞上进行大规模筛选。微流控技术有可能使 HCS 以空前的微型化程度进行。
本观点从作者的工作中突出了一个真实示例，介绍了在高度微型化的微流控格式中实施的 HCS 测定。讨论了这项技术的优势，包括成本节约、在原代细胞上进行高通量筛选、提高准确性、研究复杂时变刺激的能力以及易于自动化、集成和扩展。
读者将了解用于 HCS 的新型微流控平台的功能及其相对于传统基于平板的 HCS 的优势。
微流控技术将推动药物发现中 HCS 的重大进展以及更广泛的应用和适用性。
