Nanofluidics for single-cell analysis

Living single-cell analysis is vital for cell biology, disease pathology, drug discovery and medical treatment. It is of great significance to reveal the law of creature and to explore the mechanism of serious disease. The conventional single cell analysis focuses on a large number of cells or cell lysis, in order to obtain the average information about cells. Therefore, it fails to analyze the real-time and continuous data of differences between the individual cells, thus limiting the development of many fields, such as biomedical. Nanofluidics based biochemical analysis exhibits advantages over conventional methods in terms of small sample volume, rapid turnaround time, straightforward operation, and efficient processing,which has been widely used in complex operations such as single cell capture, separation and single cell detection. Here we review the recent developments of nanofluidic technologies for single-cell analysis,with emphasis on cell trapping, treatment, and biochemical studies. The potential of nanofluidics-based single-cell analysis is discussed.