Microfluidics-Based Single-Cell Research for Intercellular Interaction

Long Pang; Jing Ding; Xi-Xian Liu; Zhixuan Kou; Lulu Guo; Xi Xu; Shih-Kang Fan

doi:10.3389/fcell.2021.680307

Microfluidics-Based Single-Cell Research for Intercellular Interaction

Front Cell Dev Biol. 2021 Aug 12:9:680307. doi: 10.3389/fcell.2021.680307. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Long Pang^{1

2}, Jing Ding³, Xi-Xian Liu⁴, Zhixuan Kou^{1

2}, Lulu Guo^{1

2}, Xi Xu^{1

2}, Shih-Kang Fan³

Affiliations

¹ School of Basic Medical Science, The Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Brain Disorders, Xi'an Medical University, Xi'an, China.
² Xi'an Key Laboratory of Pathogenic Microorganism and Tumor Immunity, Xi'an Medical University, Xi'an, China.
³ Department of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, United States.
⁴ Key Laboratory of Thermo-Fluid Science and Engineering of MOE, School of Energy and Power Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, China.

Abstract

Intercellular interaction between cell-cell and cell-ECM is critical to numerous biology and medical studies, such as stem cell differentiation, immunotherapy and tissue engineering. Traditional methods employed for delving into intercellular interaction are limited by expensive equipment and sophisticated procedures. Microfluidics technique is considered as one of the powerful measures capable of precisely capturing and manipulating cells and achieving low reagent consumption and high throughput with decidedly integrated functional components. Over the past few years, microfluidics-based systems for intercellular interaction study at a single-cell level have become frequently adopted. This review focuses on microfluidic single-cell studies for intercellular interaction in a 2D or 3D environment with a variety of cell manipulating techniques and applications. The challenges to be overcome are highlighted.

Keywords: cell culture; cell-cell communication; microfluidic technology; single-cell analysis; single-cell manipulation.

Publication types

Review