Advances in Microfluidics and Lab-on-a-Chip Technologies

TL;DR

This paper reviews how microfluidics and nanotechnologies are revolutionizing molecular diagnostics by enabling faster, more sensitive, and portable analysis methods across various biomedical and biosafety applications.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of recent advances in microfluidic applications for molecular diagnostics, highlighting new capabilities and practical point-of-care solutions.

Findings

Microfluidics enhances sensitivity and reduces analysis time.

Microfluidic platforms enable sample-in, answer-out diagnostics.

Applications include nucleic acid amplification and cell sorting.

Abstract

Advances in molecular biology are enabling rapid and efficient analyses for effective intervention in domains such as biology research, infectious disease management, food safety, and biodefense. The emergence of microfluidics and nanotechnologies has enabled both new capabilities and instrument sizes practical for point-of-care. It has also introduced new functionality, enhanced sensitivity, and reduced the time and cost involved in conventional molecular diagnostic techniques. This chapter reviews the application of microfluidics for molecular diagnostics methods such as nucleic acid amplification, next-generation sequencing, high resolution melting analysis, cytogenetics, protein detection and analysis, and cell sorting. We also review microfluidic sample preparation platforms applied to molecular diagnostics and targeted to sample-in, answer-out capabilities.