We propose the design of a single-cell based microfluidic platform as diagnostic tool for the evaluation of drug efficiency. Droplet-based microfluidics is used for a fast and convenient evaluation of drug and drug mixtures` therapeutic effects

与癌症等疾病作斗争仍然是一项具有挑战性和乏味的奋进。多药耐药和患者特异性反应只是使治疗方法显著复杂化的两个问题。找到正确的药物或药物组合是成功治疗的重要一步。将单细胞分析与微流体技术相结合是最有前途的方法之一，可以实现非常有效的高通量分析工具，用于评估药物效率。我们提出了一个基于单细胞的微流控平台的设计作为诊断工具的药物效率的评估。所提出的系统的基本思想是将单细胞并入液滴中，液滴充当隔室并形成细胞的独立可控环境。药物和药物混合物可以通过皮可注射器注射到相应的液滴中，皮可注射器能够以亚皮升的精度执行快速和高度准确的注射。将药物同时注射到不同的细胞中可以通过在单个芯片上串联布置不同的皮可注射器来实现。此外，将细胞分隔成液滴允许在微流体平台内容易地操纵和运输样品。因此，细胞可以容易地在芯片上孵育并单独分析。所描述的设置允许快速和方便地评估药物效率，由于装置的单细胞和基于液滴的性质，其仅需要少量有价值的资源如药物和靶细胞。所有这些品质使该项目成为药理学试验的一个有前途的工具，因此，可以为评估癌症治疗提供快速有效的新途径。

Combating against diseases like cancer is still a challenging and tedious endeavor. Multidrug resistance and the patients specific response are only two issues significantly complicating therapeutic approaches. Finding the right drug or combination of drugs is an important step towards successful treatment. Combining single-cell analysis with microfluidics is one of the most promising approaches towards very efficient, high-throughput analytic tools for the evaluation of drug efficiencies. We propose the design of a single-cell based microfluidic platform as diagnostic tool for the evaluation of drug efficiency. The fundamental idea of the proposed system is the incorporation of single-cells into droplets which act as compartments and form an independently controllable environment for the cells. Drug and drug mixtures can be injected into the corresponding droplet via picoinjectors capable of performing fast and highly accurate injections with sub-picoliter precision. Simultaneous injection of drugs into different cells can be achieved by in-serial arrangement of different picoinjectors on a single chip. Additionally, the compartization of the cells into droplets allows for an easy manipulation and transport of the samples within the microfluidic platform. Hence, the cells can easily be incubated on the chip and individually analyzed. The described setup allows for a fast and convenient evaluation of drug efficiency that requires only small amounts of valuable resources like drugs and target cells due to the single-cell and droplet-based nature of the device. All these qualities make the proposed project a promising tool for pharmacological trials and thus, could provide a fast and effective new avenue for the assessment of cancer treatments.