TY - JOUR
T1 - Emerging microfluidic tools for functional cellular immunophenotyping
T2 - A new potential paradigm for immune status characterization
AU - Chen, Weiqiang
AU - Huang, Nien Tsu
AU - Li, Xiang
AU - Yu, Zeta Tak For
AU - Kurabayashi, Katsuo
AU - Fu, Jianping
PY - 2013
Y1 - 2013
N2 - Rapid, accurate, and quantitative characterization of immune status of patients is of utmost importance for disease diagnosis and prognosis, evaluating efficacy of immunotherapeutics and tailoring drug treatments. Immune status of patients is often dynamic and patient-specific, and such complex heterogeneity has made accurate, real-time measurements of patient immune status challenging in the clinical setting. Recent advances in microfluidics have demonstrated promising applications of the technology for immune monitoring with minimum sample requirements and rapid functional immunophenotyping capability. This review will highlight recent developments of microfluidic platforms that can perform rapid and accurate cellular functional assays on patient immune cells. We will also discuss the future potential of integrated microfluidics to perform rapid, accurate, and sensitive cellular functional assays at a single-cell resolution on different types or subpopulations of immune cells, to provide an unprecedented level of information depth on the distribution of immune cell functionalities. We envision that such microfluidic immunophenotyping tools will allow for comprehensive and systems-level immunomonitoring, unlocking the potential to transform experimental clinical immunology into an information-rich science.
AB - Rapid, accurate, and quantitative characterization of immune status of patients is of utmost importance for disease diagnosis and prognosis, evaluating efficacy of immunotherapeutics and tailoring drug treatments. Immune status of patients is often dynamic and patient-specific, and such complex heterogeneity has made accurate, real-time measurements of patient immune status challenging in the clinical setting. Recent advances in microfluidics have demonstrated promising applications of the technology for immune monitoring with minimum sample requirements and rapid functional immunophenotyping capability. This review will highlight recent developments of microfluidic platforms that can perform rapid and accurate cellular functional assays on patient immune cells. We will also discuss the future potential of integrated microfluidics to perform rapid, accurate, and sensitive cellular functional assays at a single-cell resolution on different types or subpopulations of immune cells, to provide an unprecedented level of information depth on the distribution of immune cell functionalities. We envision that such microfluidic immunophenotyping tools will allow for comprehensive and systems-level immunomonitoring, unlocking the potential to transform experimental clinical immunology into an information-rich science.
KW - Immunophenotyping
KW - Microfluidics
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84890743170&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84890743170&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.3389/fonc.2013.00098
DO - 10.3389/fonc.2013.00098
M3 - Short survey
AN - SCOPUS:84890743170
SN - 2234-943X
VL - 3 APR
JO - Frontiers in Oncology
JF - Frontiers in Oncology
M1 - Article 00098
ER -