Biophysical phenotyping of C. elegans in a microfluidic chip for high-throughput drug screening

Drug discovery requires screening for potential synthetic or natural compounds from a vast number of libraries, and is therefore a lengthy process. To accurately measure drug efficacy while reducing the time, small-scale biological organisms such as Caenorhabditis elegans that closely represent the in vivo pathology of diseases, especially those related to muscle force loss and degeneration, have shown great potential. However, drug screening using C. elegans is mostly based on image-based phenotyping and does not fully take advantage of the locomotory behavior of the worm such as muscle force for biophysical phenotyping. This chapter discusses the design considerations of elastomeric micropillars and their use to quantify the muscle force in free-moving and partially immobilized worms inside microfluidic devices. As applications, the testing of drugs in hyperglycemia and neuromuscular diseases is discussed.