On-chip investigation of cell–drug interactions

Investigation of cell–drug interaction is of great importance in drug discovery but continues to pose significant challenges to develop robust, fast and high-throughput methods for pharmacologically profiling of potential drugs. Recently, cell chips have emerged as a promising technology for drug discovery/delivery, and their miniaturization and flow-through operation significantly reduce sample consumption while dramatically improving the throughput, reliability, resolution and sensitivity. Herein we review various types of miniaturized cell chips used in investigation of cell–drug interactions. The design and fabrication of cell chips including material selection, surface modification, cell trapping/patterning, concentration gradient generation and mimicking of in vivo environment are presented. Recent advances of on-chip investigations of cell–drug interactions, in particular the high-throughput screening, cell sorting, cytotoxicity testing, drug resistance analysis and pharmacological profiling are examined and discussed. It is expected that this survey can provide thoughtful basics and important applications of on-chip investigations of cell–drug interactions, thus greatly promoting research and development interests in this area.