Tavakoli Hamed, Zhou Wan, Ma Lei, Perez Stefani, Ibarra Andrea, Xu Feng, Zhan Sihui, Li XiuJun
College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, People's Republic of China.
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Texas at El Paso, 500 West University Ave, El Paso, TX 79968, USA.
Trends Analyt Chem. 2019 Aug;117:13-26. doi: 10.1016/j.trac.2019.05.010. Epub 2019 May 17.
Understanding molecular, cellular, genetic and functional heterogeneity of tumors at the single-cell level has become a major challenge for cancer research. The microfluidic technique has emerged as an important tool that offers advantages in analyzing single-cells with the capability to integrate time-consuming and labour-intensive experimental procedures such as single-cell capture into a single microdevice at ease and in a high-throughput fashion. Single-cell manipulation and analysis can be implemented within a multi-functional microfluidic device for various applications in cancer research. Here, we present recent advances of microfluidic devices for single-cell analysis pertaining to cancer biology, diagnostics, and therapeutics. We first concisely introduce various microfluidic platforms used for single-cell analysis, followed with different microfluidic techniques for single-cell manipulation. Then, we highlight their various applications in cancer research, with an emphasis on cancer biology, diagnosis, and therapy. Current limitations and prospective trends of microfluidic single-cell analysis are discussed at the end.
在单细胞水平上理解肿瘤的分子、细胞、遗传和功能异质性已成为癌症研究的一项重大挑战。微流控技术已成为一种重要工具，它在分析单细胞方面具有优势，能够轻松且高通量地将诸如单细胞捕获等耗时且费力的实验程序集成到单个微器件中。单细胞操作和分析可在多功能微流控装置内实现，用于癌症研究的各种应用。在此，我们介绍微流控装置在癌症生物学、诊断和治疗方面单细胞分析的最新进展。我们首先简要介绍用于单细胞分析的各种微流控平台，接着介绍用于单细胞操作的不同微流控技术。然后，我们重点强调它们在癌症研究中的各种应用，尤其关注癌症生物学、诊断和治疗。最后讨论了微流控单细胞分析的当前局限性和未来趋势。
