Cells in Lab-on-a-chip

Abstract

A very important application of lab-on-a-chip systems is in cell biology. This chapter describes cell biology applications of lab-on-a-chip systems and provides some examples derived from the most recent publications. Most of the theoretical aspects overlap with the theory of particles and, in fact, many preliminary studies have been carried out with beads and particles in order to simulate the fluid dynamic behaviour of suspended cells. In this chapter, aspects such as cell viability, sterility environment and microenvironment control for biological experiments in microfluidic devices are discussed. The designs, fabrication and also the operating conditions of lab-on-a-chip systems need to be adapted to such experiments.