摘要
Translation of any inventions into products requires manufacturing.Development of drug/gene/cell delivery systems will eventually face manufacturing challenges,which require the establishment of standardized processes to produce biologically-relevant products of high quality without incurring prohibitive cost.Microfluidicu technologies present many advantages to improve the quality of drug/gene/cell delivery systems.They also offer the benefits of automation.What remains unclear is whether they can meet the scale-up requirement.In this perspective,we discuss the advantages of microfluidic-assisted synthesis of nanoscale drug/gene delivery systems,formation of microscale drug/cell-encapsulated particles,generation of genetically engineered cells and fabrication of macroscale drug/cell-loaded micro-/nano-fibers.We also highlight the scale-up challenges one would face in adopting microfluidic technologies for the manufacturing of these therapeutic delivery systems.
基金
This work was supported from NIH(4UH3TR000505,AI096305,HL109442)
the NIH Common Fund for the Microphysiological Systems Initiative is acknowledged.H.F.C.is grateful for fellowship support from the Sir Edward Youde Memorial Fund Council(Hong Kong).
