Microfluidic Technologies for Human Health

The field of microfluidics has in the last decade permeated many disciplines, from physics to biology and chemistry, and from bioengineering to medical research. One of the most important applications of lab-on-a-chip devices in medicine and related disciplines is disease diagnostics, which involves steps from biological sample / analyte loading to storage, detection and analysis. The chapters collected in this book detail recent advances in these processes using microfluidic devices. The reviews of portable devices for diagnostic purposes are likely to evoke interest in and raise new research questions in interdisciplinary fields (e.g. efficient MEMS/microfluidic engineering, driven by biological and medical applications).

Advances in Microfluidic Technologies: Microfluidic 'On the Fly' Fabrication of Microstructures for Biomedical Applications; Electrophoresis and Dielectrophoresis for Lab-on-a-Chip (LOC) Analyses; Ferrofluidics; Development of Ultrasonic Embossing Technique for the Fabrication of Polymer Microfluidic Chips for DNA Sample Purification by Using Carbon Nanotubes; Microfluidics for Detection and Analysis of Biological Samples: Point-of-Care Microdevices for Global Health Diagnostics of Infectious Diseases; Integrated Microfluidic Sample Preparation for Chip Based Molecular Diagnostics; Microfluidic Glucose Sensors; Microfluidic Devices for Cellular Proteomics Studies; Systematic Evaluation of the Efficiencies of Proteins and Chemicals in Pharmaceutical Applications; Quantum Dots in Biosensors for Diagnostics; Microfluidics as a Promising Tool Towards Distributed Viral Detection; Antibody Based Blood Bioparticles Capture and Separation Using Microfluidics for Global Health; Microfluidic Technologies and Applications in Cells and Tissues: Microfluidics: On-Chip Platforms as In Vitro Disease Models; Application of Microfluidics in Stem Cell and Tissue Engineering; Applications of Microfabrication and Microfluidic Techniques for Mesenchymal Stem Cell Research; Microfluidics for Neuroscience: Novel Tools and Future Implications; A Microscale Bioinspired Cochlear-Like Sensor; Patient-Specific Modeling of Low-Density Lipoprotein Transport in Coronary Arteries.