TY - JOUR
T1 - Microfluidic and Nanofluidic Intracellular Delivery
AU - Hur, Jeongsoo
AU - Chung, Aram J.
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was supported by the Samsung Research Funding and Incubation Center for Future Technology (grant no. SRFC‐IT1802‐03), the Korea University grant (K1916951), and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT (No. 2021R1A2C2006224).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Authors. Advanced Science published by Wiley-VCH GmbH
PY - 2021/8/4
Y1 - 2021/8/4
N2 - Innate cell function can be artificially engineered and reprogrammed by introducing biomolecules, such as DNAs, RNAs, plasmid DNAs, proteins, or nanomaterials, into the cytosol or nucleus. This process of delivering exogenous cargos into living cells is referred to as intracellular delivery. For instance, clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)-Cas9 gene editing begins with internalizing Cas9 protein and guide RNA into cells, and chimeric antigen receptor-T (CAR-T) cells are prepared by delivering CAR genes into T lymphocytes for cancer immunotherapies. To deliver external biomolecules into cells, tools, including viral vectors, and electroporation have been traditionally used; however, they are suboptimal for achieving high levels of intracellular delivery while preserving cell viability, phenotype, and function. Notably, as emerging solutions, microfluidic and nanofluidic approaches have shown remarkable potential for addressing this open challenge. This review provides an overview of recent advances in microfluidic and nanofluidic intracellular delivery strategies and discusses new opportunities and challenges for clinical applications. Furthermore, key considerations for future efforts to develop microfluidics- and nanofluidics-enabled next-generation intracellular delivery platforms are outlined.
AB - Innate cell function can be artificially engineered and reprogrammed by introducing biomolecules, such as DNAs, RNAs, plasmid DNAs, proteins, or nanomaterials, into the cytosol or nucleus. This process of delivering exogenous cargos into living cells is referred to as intracellular delivery. For instance, clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)-Cas9 gene editing begins with internalizing Cas9 protein and guide RNA into cells, and chimeric antigen receptor-T (CAR-T) cells are prepared by delivering CAR genes into T lymphocytes for cancer immunotherapies. To deliver external biomolecules into cells, tools, including viral vectors, and electroporation have been traditionally used; however, they are suboptimal for achieving high levels of intracellular delivery while preserving cell viability, phenotype, and function. Notably, as emerging solutions, microfluidic and nanofluidic approaches have shown remarkable potential for addressing this open challenge. This review provides an overview of recent advances in microfluidic and nanofluidic intracellular delivery strategies and discusses new opportunities and challenges for clinical applications. Furthermore, key considerations for future efforts to develop microfluidics- and nanofluidics-enabled next-generation intracellular delivery platforms are outlined.
KW - cell transfection
KW - gene delivery
KW - intracellular delivery
KW - microfluidics
KW - nanofluidics
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85107348509&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1002/advs.202004595
DO - 10.1002/advs.202004595
M3 - Review article
C2 - 34096197
AN - SCOPUS:85107348509
VL - 8
JO - Advanced Science
JF - Advanced Science
SN - 2198-3844
IS - 15
M1 - 2004595
ER -