Droplet microfluidics for cell analysis, processing and screening

Droplet microfluidics utilizes surfactant stabilized, picoliter to nanoliter scale aqueous droplets in fluorinated oils as dynamic containers at the scale of single human cells or microbes. These droplets can be manipulated at ultra high throughput (thousands of droplets per second) in designed-for-purpose microfluidic devices. Droplet microfluidics has found uses ranging from human micro tissue culture to bio industrial cell factory screening. The lecture will detail the characteristics and limitations of droplet microfluidics in the life sciences and the application of droplet microfluidic technology to high throughput single cell and mcirocolony screening and cell mini-spheroid production for drug development.