Plate reader compatible membrane-integrated microfluidic platform for high-throughput cellular assays

This work reports a novel, versatile, and membrane-integrated 3-dimensional microfluidic platform (MP) for high-throughput biodiagnostics, with an aim towards applications in clinical cancer studies. The hybrid MP is designed to be compatible with standard equipment used in high throughput screening, featuring membrane supported micro-wells and gradient generating microstructures to enable exposure of cell samples to various concentrations of reagents of interest, suitable to run both fluorometric and colorimetric assays. This paper discusses design and fabrication of the MP, and also describes preliminary testing of colorimetric and fluorometric assays carried out on the device.