Microfluidics for Droplet Generation

Drug delivery

In recent years, biodegradable microcapsules/microparticles have gained widespread importance in the delivery of bioactive agents.  Polymer-based microcapsules/microparticles are one of the most successful new drug delivery systems. They can be used in various areas such as long-term release systems, vaccine adjuvant, and tissue engineering. Droplet based microfluidics produce highly monodispersed droplet and microcapsule/microparticle production opposed to batch emulsion methods and provide an “In-line” continuous droplet production process.

Formulation

The encapsulation of active ingredients to create flavors or fragrances for cosmetics and food products is a key part of their formulation.. A  challenge of droplet generation applied to encapsulation is to prevent the leakage of the encapsulated species. The possibility to encapsulate these compounds allows users to control the release of the compound and improve pharmacokinetics. Modern drug encapsulation methods allow efficient loading of drug molecules inside nanoparticles, thereby reducing systemic toxicity associated with drugs. Targeting nanoparticles can enhance the accumulation of nanoencapsulated drugs at the diseased site.

Next generation sequencing (NGS)

Encapsulation of a single cell inside a droplet increases NGS efficiency. The ability to study cells at single cell level using droplet based systems  combined with NGS techniques allow for the sequencing of mRNA from a large number of cells. The power of this technology, combined with droplet generation, resides in the fact that during sequencing, one can distinguish where the original information came on a cell-to-cell basis. This allows one to make a gene expression map of the cell, or even to distinguish cell populations within a tissue.

Drug discovery

In-vitro cell culture is a fundamental component of biological production systems and biotechnological research. The ability to grow cells outside of their natural environment offers many industry solutions  from the high quantity production of enzymes to cell toxicity studies and drug discovery.

Droplet generation allows one to encapsulate single or multiple cells into tiny droplets of pL volume which are generated at a rate of approximately one thousand per second.

Diagnostics

A key measurement challenge in diagnostic research involves identifying small changes in nucleic acid sequences that are commonly associated with genetic diseases such as Down’s syndrome and many cancers. Digital PCR (dPCR) carries out a single reaction within a sample as standard PCR, however the sample is separated into a large number of partitions where reactions take place in each partition individually. This is an excellent solution to partition a sample, and dPCR technology that makes use of droplet microfluidics is often called droplet digital PCR (ddPCR).