Microfluidic Bioreactors and Microphysiological Systems: Development and Applications

Dear colleagues,

In recent years there has been an increased interest in employing diverse microfluidic approaches to culture a variety of cell types and cellular constructs. Their microfluidic bioreactors constrain culture chamber dimensions to the micrometer scale, limiting fluid interaction volumes to several microliters and cell numbers in the thousands, leading to a more physiologically relevant fluidic nutrient and chemical exchanges. Additionally, they may have passive and active features in the same dimensional order as cells and cellular sub-features and are capable of recreating complex physical and chemical microenvironments similar to those found in vivo.

As such, in this Special Issue we would like to highlight research papers, reviews, or short communications that emphasize the developments and applications of microfluidic platforms that are capable of maintaining single or large and mixed populations of cells in 2D and 3D organotypic cultures, whole organoids, small tissue samples, or organs-on-a-chip that address pressing questions in biology, toxicology, development of novel therapeutics, or the better understanding of disease progression. Since microfluidic bioreactors do not exist on their own, we would also like to invite papers that deal with bioreactor support infrastructures such as platform interconnects, novel biomaterials for microfluidic applications, microscale fluid handling, and sampling including novel micropumps and valves, as well as effluent sensing and detection schemes and assay developments compatible with microfluidic volumes.

Dr. Dmitry A. Markov
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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• Microfluidic bioreactors
• Microphysiological systems
• Novel biomaterials
• Long-term cell culture
• Organotypic cell culture
• Disease microenvironment
• Organoid culture
• Organs-on-Chip
• Micropumps
• Microscale detection
• Microfluidic assays