Microfluidic based single cell or droplet manipulation: Methods and applications

The isolation of single cell or droplet is first and crucial step to single-cell analysis, which is important for cancer research and diagnostic methods. This review provides an overview of technologies that are currently used or in development to realize the isolation. Microfluidic based manipulation is an emerging technology with the distinct advantages of miniaturization and low cost. Therefore, recent developments in microfluidic isolated methods have attracted extensive attention. We introduced herein five strategies based on microfluid: trap, microfluidic discrete manipulation, bioprinter, capillary and inertial force. For every technology, their basic principles and features were discussed firstly. Then some modified approaches and applications were listed as the extension. Finally, we compared the advantages and drawbacks of these methods, and analyzed the trend of the manipulation based on microfluidics. [Display omitted] •Trap, microfluidic discrete manipulation, bioprinter, capillary and interial anligning based on microfluidics are summarized.•Single cell or droplet manipulation methods are discussed including optical, geometrical, electric, magnetic and DMF methods.•An overview of the existing difficulties and applications for isolated manipulation study in this field is provided.