Development of droplet-based microfluidic technology for drug discovery, drug delivery and biomedical diagnosis applications

我们一直在开发用于化学和生物医学分析的微流控芯片技术。用于我们开发的主要工具包括芯片设计和优化的数值模拟，使用软光刻和传统光刻技术的微加工，以及使用基于UV和荧光的可视化技术的表征。最近开发的微型器件的例子包括颗粒分选和计数芯片、细胞培养芯片、蛋白芯片和微型夹持器。其主要应用领域有三个：i）用于水和食品安全控制的化学检测; ii）基于生物标志物的疾病诊断; iii）用于药物发现和递送的细胞分析。拟议的研究计划将支持第三个方向：基于细胞的药物发现，药物输送和生物医学诊断分析。

We have been developing microfluidic chip technology for chemical and biomedical assays. The major tools used for our development include numerical simulation for chip design and optimization, microfabrication using softlithography and conventional photolithography technology, and characterization using both UV- and fluorescence-based visualization techniques. Examples of recently developed microdevices include particle sorting and counting chips, cell culture chips, protein chips and microgrippers. The major applications target three areas which are: i) chemical detection for water and food safety control; ii) biomarker-based disease diagnosis and iii) cell-based analysis for drug discovery and delivery. The proposed research program will support the third direction: cell-based analysis for drug discovery, drug delivery and biomedical diagnosis.