Recent applications of microchip electrophoresis to biomedical analysis

•Novel microchip electrophoresis (ME) technology including modes and detectors are reviewed.•Recent biomedical applications of ME during 2010 to date are presented.•Advantages and limitations of ME are addressed. Many separation methods have been developed for biomedical analysis, including chromatographic (e.g. high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and gas chromatography (GC)) and electrophoretic methods (e.g. gel electrophoresis and capillary electrophoresis (CE)). Among these techniques, CE provides advantages in terms of high separation efficiency, simplicity, low sample and solvent volume consumption, short analysis time and applicability to a wide range of biomedically important substances. Microchip electrophoresis (ME) is a miniaturized platform of CE and is now considered as a simpler and more convenient alternative, which has demonstrated potential in analytical chemistry. High-throughput, cost-effective and portable analysis systems can be developed using ME. The current review describes different separation modes and detectors that have been employed in ME to analyze various classes of biomedical analytes (e.g. pharmaceuticals and related substances, nucleic acids, amino acids, peptides, proteins, antibodies and antigens, carbohydrates, cells, cell components and lysates). Recent applications (during 2010–2014) in these areas are presented in tables and some significant findings are highlighted.