Lab-on-Chip Technology: A Review on Design Trends and Future Scope in Biomedical Applications <s> Figure 4. Example of a modular lab on a chip for stem cell studies <s> Cell culture technologies were initially developed as research tools for studying cell functions, but nowadays they are essential for the biotechnology industry, with rapidly expanding applications requiring more and more advancements with respect to traditional tools. Miniaturization and integration of sensors and microfluidic components with cell culture techniques open the way to the development of cellomics as a new field of research targeting innovative analytic platforms for high-throughput studies. This approach enables advanced cell studies under controllable conditions by providing inexpensive, easy-to-operate devices. Thanks to their numerous advantages cell-chips have become a hotspot in biosensors and bioelectronics fields and have been applied to very different fields. In this review exemplary applications will be discussed, for cell counting and detection, cytotoxicity assays, migration assays and stem cell studies. <s> BIB001 </s> Lab-on-Chip Technology: A Review on Design Trends and Future Scope in Biomedical Applications <s> Figure 4. Example of a modular lab on a chip for stem cell studies <s> Recent technological advances provide new tools to manipulate cells and biological agents in micro/nano-liter volumes. With precise control over small volumes, the cell microenvironment and other biological agents can be bioengineered; interactions between cells and external stimuli can be monitored; and the fundamental mechanisms such as cancer metastasis and stem cell differentiation can be elucidated. Technological advances based on the principles of electrical, magnetic, chemical, optical, acoustic, and mechanical forces lead to novel applications in point-of-care diagnostics, regenerative medicine, in vitro drug testing, cryopreservation, and cell isolation/purification. In this review, we first focus on the underlying mechanisms of emerging examples for cell manipulation in small volumes targeting applications such as tissue engineering. Then, we illustrate how these mechanisms impact the aforementioned biomedical applications, discuss the associated challenges, and provide perspectives for further development. <s> BIB002
A modular Lab-on-Chip for the study of stem cells is presented in BIB001 and shown in figure 4. The development of such a device requires the integration of several sensing modules and microfluidic components on a chip needed to perform cell detection, isolation and counting, differentiation studies and migration of assays or viability. In this article, various advantages of cell chips have been discussed that cover almost all possible requirements of a cell biology laboratory resulting in a fully integrated cell study system. The role of microfluidics in this system is to create chemical gradients, for isolating specific cell types and for integrating three-dimensional scaffolds. Inefficient recovery of cells is one of the major limitations of micruifluidic approach especially in the case of rare cells that are at very low concentrations BIB002 . So for capturing the cells in the microfluidic channels, it has been proposed to coat the alginate based hydrogels with specific antibodies. In general, we can conclude that in comparison to the traditional cell culture techniques cellomics have enable the biologists to manage the complex environments in an automated and easy way with measurement reproducibility and increased throughput.