At present cancer research focuses on three major areas viz. cancer diagnostics, drugs development, and next-generation therapies. About 90% of the in-vitro research rely on traditional two-dimensional (2D) monolayer cell culture systems. 2D cell culture systems fail to accurately recapitulate the structure, function, physiology of living tissues, due to which the various studies such as assessing the efficacy of new drugs, study gene expressions, metabolic pathways, and cell proliferation do not correlate to actual In-vivo scenario. In contrast, a 3D cell culture system promotes many biological relevant functions which are not observed in 2D. The primary reason for this is attributed to two reasons: 1)In the real scenario cancer cells experience limited diffusion of oxygen, nutrients and signaling molecules in a dynamic way, which the 2D fails to mimmick. 2)Cellular interaction, function, growth and signaling all occurs in a highly complex 3D architecture with the influence of extracellular matrix and other regulatory factors, which cannot be recapitulated in 2D systems.

To achieve this dynamic coordination microfluidic cell culture systems can be employed which can provide a continuous flow of nutrients, exchange of gases and other regulatory factors in a well-controlled manner. Such a system is ideal to mimic the in vivo environment of cells. The idea to couple microfluidics with 3D cell culture system will allow study of cellular functions such as proliferation in dynamic systems, cell-cell interaction and cellular response to the external environment in a much realistic environment. Further microfluidic systems give an opportunity to study cellular interaction by fabricating microstructures and artificial scaffolds to study cellular movements and the underlying mechanobiology. Using the microfluidic approach better drugs and therapies can be developed which can be easily translated to invivo systems and hence can bridge the gap between invitro and invivo system.

 

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