ENGINEERING A MICROFLUDIC PLATFORM AS A PRE-CLINICAL MODEL FOR BIOMEDICAL APPLICATIONS

Abstract

Further technological advances are in great need for improving our understanding about critical biological and fundamental pathological processes, such as tissue development and cancer progression, or for the discovery and screening of novel pharmacological drugs. Preclinical experimentation demands for highly reliable and physiologically-relevant systems capable of recapitulating the complex human physiology. Traditional in vitro models, albeit widely employed, fail to reproduce the complexity of the native scenario with cells displaying aberrant gene expressions. Similarly, in vivo animal models, such as mice, poorly mimic the human condition and are ethically questionable. During the last decades, a new paradigm in preclinical modelling has emerged aiming to solve the limitations of the aforementioned methods. The combination of advanced tissue engineering, nanotechnology, and cell biology has resulted in the development of cutting-edge microfluidics-based models with an unprecedented ability to recreate within a microfluidic device the native habitat of cells within a microengineered chip. A diverse variety of micro- and bio-fabrication techniques is available for the development of microfluidic devices. Among all them, UV-photolithography and soft lithography is the considered the gold-standard method for the fabrication of chips due to its simplicity, versatility, and rapid prototyping. In this work, we describe the step-by-step fabrication procedure of a microfluidic chip by UV-photolithography and replica molding and discuss about their potential applications in the biomedical field.