Abstract: As compared to the conventional 2D cell cultures, three-dimensional (3D) cell cultures are now being extensively utilized as they allow to mimic the in-vitro conditions which facilitate the understanding of disease mechanism, drug action, proliferation rate. Microfluidic devices, with controllable chambers and channels in the micrometer range (10–1000 μm), are suitable for miniaturization analysis and they show great promise as new and influential players in drug discovery. They can be also integrated with various other techniques for better results in micro-environments and combining them with 3-D cell cultures gives rise to a wide range of Organ-on-a-chip approaches. Integrating these three-dimensional cultures with microfluidics devices will not only enhance the understanding of various parameters but will also cut the consumption of reagents, tissue culture, and biological specimens due to their efficient composite assay protocols. Due to these factors, they are being extensively used for cancer research, single-cell analytics, cell sorting, and molecular analysis. My presentation would provide an overview of trends, recent developments along with the work done in this domain in the Bio-MEMS lab, IIIT-A. I would also share the optimized fabrication procedure followed in our lab to make the process of microfabrication more cost-effective and less complicated.

Speaker: Nimisha Roy (RSS2017505, PhD Student)