The purpose of the present review is to try to highlight recent advances in the application of microfluidic technology on non-invasive prenatal diagnosis (NIPD). The immunoaffinity based microfluidic technology is the most common approach for NIPD, followed by size-based microfluidic methods. Immunoaffinity microfluidic methods can enrich and isolate circulating fetal extravillous trophoblasts (fEVTs) or fetal nucleated red blood cells (fnRBCs) for NIPD by using specific antibodies, but size-based microfluidic systems are only applied to isolate fEVTs. Most studies based on the immunoaffinity microfluidic system gave good results. Enough fetal cells were obtained for chromosomal and/or genetic analysis in all blood samples. However, the results from studies using size-based microfluidic systems for NIPD are less than ideal. In conclusion, recent advances in microfluidic devices make the immunoaffinity based microfluidic system potentially a powerful tool for cell-based NIPD. However, more clinical validation is needed.
Keywords: circulating fetal cells; extravillous trophoblasts; fetal nucleated RBCs; immunoaffinity; microfluidic devices; non-invasive prenatal diagnosis; size-based microfluidics.