The Use of Microfluidics in Cytotoxicity and Nanotoxicity Experiments

Abstract

Many unique chemical compounds and nanomaterials are being developed, and each one requires a considerable range of in vitro and/or in vivo toxicity screening in order to evaluate their safety. The current methodology of in vitro toxicological screening on cells is based on well-plate assays that require time-consuming manual handling or expensive automation to gather enough meaningful toxicology data. Cost reduction; access to faster, more comprehensive toxicity data; and a robust platform capable of quantitative testing, will be essential in evaluating the safety of new chemicals and nanomaterials, and, at the same time, in securing the confidence of regulators and end-users. Microfluidic chips offer an alternative platform for toxicity screening that has the potential to transform both the rates and efficiency of nanomaterial testing, as reviewed here. The inherent advantages of microfluidic technologies offer high-throughput screening with small volumes of analytes, parallel analyses, and low-cost fabrication.

A Review on Conventional and Advanced Methods for Nanotoxicology Evaluation of Engineered Nanomaterials

“…Microfluidics offer the ability to introduce many biological conditions in a single device and replicate in vivo situations and dimensions [67]. Therefore, it allows rapid, real-time, and multi-sample analysis, which creates a versatile, non-invasive technique that can produce quantitative information concerning alterations in cellular function upon exposure to different NMs [68,69].…”

Advances in Microtechnology for Improved Cytotoxicity Assessment

“…They generate a gradient in the composition of a solution, like, in this case, the toxic compound to be tested. Thanks to this PDMS gradient generating devices, several works have demonstrated that High-Throughput (HTP) toxicity analysis of specific compounds can be simultaneously carried out, at different concentrations, on chip, for cytotoxicity assessment (Hosokawa et al, 2011;McCormick et al, 2017;Li et al, 2018) PDMS has been the most commonly used material for the fabrication of prototypes during the last decade but it presents some drawbacks such as absortion of small molecules and high gas permeability, thus there is a demand to fabricate microfluidic devices made of other polymers. As an example, Nguyen et al reported a hybrid polymeric microfluidic device for cytotoxicity testing, made of poly(methyl methacrylate) with integrated polyethylene terephthalate (Nguyen et al, 2019).…”

Effects of microenvironmental factors on assessing nanoparticle toxicity

“…30,34 For these reasons, several microfluidic devices mimicking in vivo environments have been designed and utilised for toxicity screening. 35–38 These devices allow monitoring of the interaction between nanoparticles and cells exposed to mechanical stress (fluidic shear stress and cyclic stretching) or cultured within the 3D matrix space.…”