Nanomaterials in microfluidics for disease diagnosis and therapy development.

Nanomaterials are attractive in biological analysis due to their advantages such as high surface-to-volume ratio, surface plasmonic effect, ease to be chemically modified, and have been applied for diagnosis and therapy of diseases like cancer, cardiovascular and infectious diseases. Meanwhile, microfluidic devices provide an ideal platform for disease diagnosis with a small sample, and for therapy evaluation by recapitulating in vivo like 3D models. The application of nanomaterials in microfluidic devices as capturing, signaling and energy transferring components has combined the advantages of both technologies. Here we focused on recent advances of nanomaterials incorporated microfluidic devices for analysis of proteins, nucleic acids, cells, and small molecules with various analytical methods such as optical, electrochemical, chemiluminescent approaches. Moreover, microfluidic based biological systems were used to evaluate nanoparticles based therapies including photodynamic therapy, photothermal therapy and controlled drug delivery. The combination of nanotechnology and microfluidic technology hold great potential toward medical and clinical applications in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]