Open AccessMicrofluidic three-dimensional cell culture of stem cells for high-throughput analysis
Author(s) -
Jeong Ah Kim,
Soohyun Hong,
Won Jong Rhee
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
world journal of stem cells
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.907
H-Index - 18
ISSN - 1948-0210
DOI - 10.4252/wjsc.v11.i10.803
Subject(s) - stem cell , drug discovery , 3d cell culture , microfluidics , organoid , nanotechnology , organ on a chip , microfluidic chip , computer science , cell culture , computational biology , biology , bioinformatics , microbiology and biotechnology , materials science , genetics
Although the recent advances in stem cell engineering have gained a great deal of attention due to their high potential in clinical research, the applicability of stem cells for preclinical screening in the drug discovery process is still challenging due to difficulties in controlling the stem cell microenvironment and the limited availability of high-throughput systems. Recently, researchers have been actively developing and evaluating three-dimensional (3D) cell culture-based platforms using microfluidic technologies, such as organ-on-a-chip and organoid-on-a-chip platforms, and they have achieved promising breakthroughs in stem cell engineering. In this review, we start with a comprehensive discussion on the importance of microfluidic 3D cell culture techniques in stem cell research and their technical strategies in the field of drug discovery. In a subsequent section, we discuss microfluidic 3D cell culture techniques for high-throughput analysis for use in stem cell research. In addition, some potential and practical applications of organ-on-a-chip or organoid-on-a-chip platforms using stem cells as drug screening and disease models are highlighted.