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Emerging Nanotechnology-Enabled Approaches to Mitigate COVID-19 Pandemic
Published in Devarajan Thangadurai, Saher Islam, Charles Oluwaseun Adetunji, Viral and Antiviral Nanomaterials, 2022
Maria Shoukat, Samiullah Khan, Arshad Islam, Maleeha Azam, Malik Badshah
Microfluidic devices are another PoC testing-based approach (Syedmoradi et al. 2017). Microfluidic devices are tiny chips containing small channels and reaction cavities, such as poly-dimethyl sulfoxide, paper, or glass. They require only a small amount of sample and detection time (Gupta et al. 2020). These microfluidic devices or chips work on the principal of electrokinetic and capillary action to segregate liquid samples (Bhalla et al. 2020). In a recent study, the microfluidic devices were modified by employing the smartphone application, resulting in much faster diagnosis of various sexually transmitted viral infections with sensitivity and specificity of 100%, and 87%, respectively (Zhang and Liu 2016). In another study, a highly throughput microfluidic device was developed that was able to access the level of IgG and IgM antibodies against four different antigenic proteins of SARS-CoV-2 with 95% sensitivity and 91% specificity. It was further demonstrated that both of the parameters were enhanced up to 100% when the human sera was collected from the 3rd week of symptom onset. Further research is needed to develop new microfluidic devices to diagnose COVID-19.
Rapid Methods in Cosmetic Microbiology
Published in Philip A. Geis, Cosmetic Microbiology, 2020
Lab-on-a-chip technologies are based on an automated, micro- or nano-scale laboratory that enables sample preparation, fluid handling, and analysis and detection steps to be carried out within the confines of a single microchip. The technology is based on microfluidics, and the most familiar consumer application is inkjet printing. Microfluidics allow for the manipulation of minute amounts of liquid in miniaturized systems that are composed of a network of channels and wells that are etched onto glass or polymer chips. Pressure or voltage gradients move pico- or nano-liter volumes through the channels in a well-controlled manner that enables sample handling, mixing, dilution, electrophoresis and chromatographic separation, staining and detection. Currently available lab chips analyze protein, DNA, RNA and whole cells in fluid samples. At least one currently available technology (bioMérieux’s DiversiLab) uses a microfluidics chip to separate rep-PCR amplicons (rep-PCR targets short, repeating sequences of unknown function that occur randomly throughout the DNA of an organism). The chip is processed in a bioanalyzer, where the amplicons pass through a laser, causing fluorescence of an intercalating dye. The resulting rep-PCR fingerprints are compared with a database, and a detection result, or microbial identification, is provided.
Microfluidic Technologies for Accelerating the Clinical Translation of Nanoparticles
Published in Lajos P. Balogh, Nano-Enabled Medical Applications, 2020
Pedro M. Valencia, Omid C. Farokhzad, Rohit Karnik, Robert Langer
At present, the field of microfluidics applied to nanomedicine is still in its infancy. Although nanoparticles have a relatively small footprint in the pharmaceutical industry, it is anticipated that as these products bring in revenue, industry-led research and development efforts would probably adopt technologies, such as microfluidics, to accelerate their development. Nevertheless, microfluidic technologies, such as organ-on-a-chip and small-animal screening, are likely to be adopted first for the screening of small-molecule drug candidates, where the need for such tools is evident.
Critical design parameters to develop biomimetic organ-on-a-chip models for the evaluation of the safety and efficacy of nanoparticles
Published in Expert Opinion on Drug Delivery, 2023
Mahmoud Abdelkarim, Luis Perez-Davalos, Yasmin Abdelkader, Amr Abostait, Hagar I. Labouta
Microfluidics is a discipline of science that deals with the flow and manipulation of small volumes of fluid down to picolitres or lower, constrained in dimensions <1000 µm [35]. When the dimensions in a fluidic system are downsized to the microscale, many of the impacts or phenomena observed on the macroscale are no longer valid. For example, gravitational forces become negligible on the microscale as the surface tension dominates the gravity [36]. Fluid flow in microfluidic channels, therefore, behaves differently in which viscous force (the force due to the friction between fluid layers) dominates over inertial force (the resistance to change the motion state; speed, and direction), and a fully laminar flow prevails [37,38]. These characteristics of the microfluidic devices allow the recapitulation of the different micro-cellular systems in the human body [39]. Microfluidics offers many advantages, including the economical use of samples and reagents due to the small volumes of liquids involved, the ability to conduct experiments under highly replicable conditions, and the precise control over the flow. In addition, Microfluidics provides a high surface-to-volume ratio that allows a fast and cost-effective heat and mass transfer, the high Spatio-temporal resolution and high control of variables in the microenvironment such as concentration gradients of nutrients and chemicals, and the ability to integrate different feedback control elements (like sensors and cameras) [39,40].
A tale of nucleic acid–ionizable lipid nanoparticles: Design and manufacturing technology and advancement
Published in Expert Opinion on Drug Delivery, 2023
The main limitations of the existing microfluidic technology (Table 2) made researchers think of an alternative and easy method. The method should be as effective as microfluidic but less complicated, with fewer steps and no use of organic solvents. Nour Shobaki [97], 2020, developed siRNA-ionizable LNPs for cancer immunotherapy by using a simple, vigorous mixing and ultrafiltration method. Poornima Kalyanram [98] and team 2021 constructed photosensitizer-loaded ionizable LNPs using a simple freeze-thaw cycle and probe-sonication method. Debelec-Butuner et al. 2021 [99] used a micro-pipetting method for siRNA-ionizable LNPs. Yuchen Fan [100] 2021 produced ASO-ionizable LNPs using an automated solvent-injection technology and robotic liquid handling rather than microfluidics technology. All of the investigations indicate the necessity for alternate, scalable, and easy techniques for the formation of ionizable LNPs. In 2022, Lili Cui [101] reported an automated high-throughput screening platform for RNA-ionizable LNPs formulation as an alternative to microfluidics technology. The researchers claimed to have overcome the limitations of scale-up difficulties of the microfluidics technology. Although there has been relatively little study on alternatives to microfluidics technology, the strategy is gradually replacing the expensive, multistep, and complex microfluidics technology for the manufacture of nucleic acid-ionizable LNPs.
Merits and advances of microfluidics in the pharmaceutical field: design technologies and future prospects
Published in Drug Delivery, 2022
Amr Maged, Reda Abdelbaset, Azza A. Mahmoud, Nermeen A. Elkasabgy
Microfluidics is the science that deals with the precise control of small volume fluid flow (directing, mixing, or separating) through networks of micro-scaled channels of different lengths and geometries. Compared to macro-scale flow, the dominating force in microfluidics is the viscous force, explaining the prevalence of laminar flow in the microchannels. In 1979, the birth of the first microfluidic device was introduced by Terry and his colleagues for gas chromatography (Terry et al., 1979). Then, Manz et al. and other researchers developed microfluidic platforms for electrophoresis and sample separation purposes at the beginning of the 1990s (Manz et al., 1990; Harrison et al., 1992; Mathies & Huang, 1992; Woolley & Mathies, 1994). Microfluidics was then used as a multidisciplinary breakthrough technology that was quickly established with wide applications as in environmental sensing (Vasudev et al., 2013; Pol et al., 2017), combinatorial chemistry (synthesis and assays) (Li et al., 2018; Liu et al., 2019), energy applications (Chen et al., 2018; De et al., 2020), micro-propulsion (Feng et al., 2015; Serrano et al., 2018), organ-on-a-chip technology (Sittadjody et al., 2021; Zheng et al., 2021), clinical diagnostics (Luo et al., 2005; Chango et al., 2006), and drug delivery (Bains et al., 2017; Soheili et al., 2021). This review focuses on the application of microfluidics in drug delivery.