With ever increasing drug resistance and emergence of new diseases, demand for new drug development is at an unprecedented urgency. This fact has led to extensive recent efforts to develop new drugs and novel techniques for efficient drug screening. However, new drug development is commonly hindered by cost and time span. Thus, developing more accessible, cost-effective methods for drug screening is necessary. Compared with conventional drug screening methods, a microfluidic-based system has superior advantages in sample consumption, reaction time, and cost of the operation. In this paper, the advantages of microfluidic technology in drug screening as well as the critical factors for device design are described. The strategies and applications of microfluidics for drug screening are reviewed. Moreover, current limitations and future prospects for a drug screening microdevice are also discussed.

中文翻译：

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用于药物筛选的微流体学的最新进展。


随着耐药性的不断增加和新疾病的出现，新药开发的需求变得前所未有的紧迫。这一事实导致最近人们广泛努力开发新药和高效药物筛选的新技术。然而，新药开发通常受到成本和时间跨度的阻碍。因此，有必要开发更容易获得、更具成本效益的药物筛选方法。与传统的药物筛选方法相比，基于微流控的系统在样品消耗、反应时间和操作成本方面具有优越的优势。本文阐述了微流控技术在药物筛选中的优势以及装置设计的关键因素。综述了微流控药物筛选的策略和应用。此外，还讨论了药物筛选微型设备的当前局限性和未来前景。