ABSTRACT
Microfluidic chip or lab-on-a-chip is a multidisciplinary cross-technology. Among them, organ-on-a-chip technology enables precise regulation of cells and microenvironment at micron level.This tecnology is expected to simulate in vivo human physiology and overcome the shortcomings of traditional animal models and cell culture techniques.In ophthalmology, organ-on-a-chip models are primarily focused on creating biomimetic models of the cornea, retina and posterior chamber to study diseases such as dry eye, glaucoma, age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy.In addition, continuous monitoring and real-time diagnosis of tear and intraocular fluid biomarkers using microfluidic chips have become a current research hot topic.The microfluidic chips also have a wide range of applications in drug analysis, drug development, and drug screening.This article reviews the recent progress and shortcomings of microfluidic chip in in vitro model construction, point-of-care testing and drug development, and discusses its future development in ophthalmology.
ABSTRACT
Microfluidic technology refers to the technique of precise fluid control by manipulating submillimeter-scale fluids. In recent years, the use of microfluidic technology has realized the construction of organ-on-chips. The organ-on-chip refers to a micro-model with physiological functions, and cultivating living cells in a continuously perfused micro-chamber to simulate the physiological functions of tissues and organs. As the physiological function of the organ-on-chip has many advantages such as definite function, controllable microenvironment, rich measurement information, low chemical consumption, low cost, promising automation and high throughput, it has a huge application prospect in the field of drug development to solve the bottleneck problems in cellular and animal experiments, which has caused a great concern in the academic community. Although the organ-on-chip is still a very young research field, some microfluidic organ-on-chips have been developed and their potential applications are explored, including drug target optimization, drug screening and toxicity tests, and biomarker identification. In this review, the progress made in microfluidic organ microchips and their potential significance in clinical research were analyzed.