Author(s)

Rong-Cong Luo, Chia-Hung Chen

Department of Bioengineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore.

Droplet based microfluidic is an effective, versatile and scalable approach which can be used to produce structured microgels with desirable features. The high degree of control endowed with microfluidics enables the formation of various functional microgels such as multicompartment encapsulations, Janus shaped particles and non spherical microgels. These microgels have aroused great interest in biological engineering aspect, since they outperform their counterparts produced from other techniques and have been applied in drug delivery, 3 Dimensional cell culture, micro tissues, single cell assay, tissue engineering and bioimaging. In this review, we will summarize the fabrication processes, technology comparisons and the usages in biomedical applications.

Droplet Microfluidic; Microgels; Cell Encapsulation; Tissue Engineering

Luo, R. and Chen, C. (2012) Structured Microgels through Microfluidic Assembly and Their Biomedical Applications. Soft, 1, 1-23. doi: 10.4236/soft.2012.11001.