Microfluidic platforms for the manipulation of cells and particles

The vast majority of researches in cell biology, biomedicine, biotechnology, and chemistry require cell/particle separation from a pool of samples for disease diagnostics and clinical applications. Hence, diverse techniques are proposed to effectively manipulate cells and particles in macro and microsystems. Conventional techniques are time-consuming and hand-laborious, bringing about the advent of new microfluidic techniques used for cell/ particle handling. Several high-throughput, label-free, and reliable techniques are proposed that accurately manipulate cells and particles in microsystems. Herein, we present a concise review on the operation principles of various cell/particle manipulation methods and explain their merits and limitations. First, an overview of the conventional techniques currently being utilized in clinical applications is given, and then novel microfluidic and lab-on-a-chip techniques, including hydrodynamics, acoustics, electric, magnetic, optical, and thermal, are introduced. Finally, the future trends of this field are briefly studied, and some of the novel mechanisms that exhibit great potential in the cell or particle manipulation are presented.