Disease-on-a-chip: from point-of-care to personalized medicine

About this Research Topic

Background

Microfluidic chips are promising devices for sample preparation due to several properties, including low volume sample handling, biocompatibility, low-cost of materials and fabrication, ease of disposal, and simple operation. These features are essential for point-of-care applications and allow mimicking of complex biological environments within microfluidic systems, which are highly important for advancing organ-on-chip developments.

The use of new microfluidic devices along with miniaturized biosensors able to detect disease biomarkers enables the analysis of a single drop of body fluid within the time frame of a typical visit to a doctor's office. This feature supports earlier, more personalized, and more effective therapeutic options. Miniaturization also allows innovative technologies to integrate various biomimetic cues, including biophysical, biochemical and mechanobiological cues, as well as tissue/organ model drug interactions within microfluidic platforms. In the last years, due to a number of key technological advances, several assays and biological procedures have been miniaturized into chip format, improving both self-monitoring and point-of-care testing. These advances can also help to predict better how drugs and biological systems interact, which can, in turn, improve and optimize patient outcomes.

This Research Topic aims to report research and progress in the following fields:

- Microfluidics developments and applications in diagnosis
- Mechanical, physical and chemical inputs and outputs in disease-on-chip studies
- Integration of sensing technologies in microfluidic systems – Lab-on-chips
- 3D tissue/organ models interactions in microfluidics – Organ-on-chips

Research or review papers regarding progress in technological advances of biosensors, microfluidics, lab-on-a-chip, organ-on-chip and nanotools for biomedical applications are welcome to this topic.

Keywords: disease-on-a-chip, organ-on-a-chip, personalized medicine, microfluidic chips, 3D tissue models, 3D organ models, lab-on-chip

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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