Hybrid Microfluidic Sensing Platforms for Cancer Cell Study: Recent Advances and Future Prospects

The importance of mammalian cell culture is vividly seen in biotechnology, drug screening, and large-scale pharmaceuticals production. There have been numerous efforts in designing an automated cell culture system replicating the natural microenvironment of the cells to improve throughput analysis with reduced process costs. The conventional monolayer cell culture methods are widely used to study the behaviour of various types of cells, including cancer cells. However, various limitations are associated with two-dimensional (2D) cell culturing methods. These limitations include the disturbance of interactions between the cellular and extracellular environments, cell morphology, polarity, and division method changes. Due to these limitations, 3D cell culturing techniques are significant for their resemblance in vivo tissue and cellular interactions. Research groups have employed microfluidic systems with this strategy to develop novel organ-on chips to study cancerous tumor invasion and substitute animal testing.

Furthermore, many efforts have been made by incorporating sensing instruments with these microfluidic systems to monitor cellular/organ activities continuously and quantitively evaluate their behaviour and response to various molecules/drugs. This thesis will comprehensively examine the most recent studies about two different aspects of developing microfluidic and sensing devices by focusing on numerous forms of cancer. These emerging microfluidic/sensing system technologies will play crucial roles in enhancing our understanding of cancer cell behaviours and accelerate the research activities to find the most suitable drugs for cancer treatment.