Microfluidics in Late Adolescence

George Whitesides

What is now the future of microfluidics? My opinion is that it is now past the initial phase

of “technology developments:” it has developed at least the first level of the methodologies

required to become a large-scale technology. It is a key support for both chemical and

biochemical analysis, and thus for biology. The science, and initial prototyping of

applications, are successful; now comes the expensive tasks in engineering, production, and

market development. Of these, I list only five. 

1. Public Health (in both Developed and Developing Regions), Point-of-Care Analysis, Environmental Testing, and National Security. All of these subjects require functionally simple analytical methods that can be used remotely from central laboratories. 
2. Drug Development. The pharmaceutical industry must become more efficient in generating new drugs. More “human-like” testing (probably based on cell and organ culture) is one of the most promising approaches to this problem. Cells and organs on chips also provide new approaches to fundamental cell biology. 
3. The Web. The web has opened entirely new approaches (unlimited data, deep learning, neural networks, and other forms of artificial intelligence) to understanding, monitoring, and testing large populations of patients, and discovering patterns in large numbers of data. Although some of this information can be obtained non-invasively, ultimately many tests will require access to information present in biological fluids such as blood and urine. Simple methods of sampling and analyzing fluids will also become more, rather than less, important as precision medicine is increasingly mandated for patient safety and management of costs. 
4. Fluids in Biology. All of life involves moving fluids. From cytoplasmic streaming in single cells to the complex fluidic systems that process blood, lymph, urine, and other fluids, complex fluids are everywhere. We barely understand the physical – much less the biophysical – properties of these fluids, and microfluidic systems will be required to study them. 
5. Organic Synthesis. Even this highly-developed field may be revolutionized by a combination of microfluidic synthesis and (finally) computer-based path selection.

https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.05595