title: High-content screening in microfluidic devices.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Miniaturization is the key to advancing the state of the art in high-content screening (HCS) in order to enable dramatic cost savings through reduced usage of expensive biochemical reagents and to enable large-scale screening on primary cells. Microfluidic technology offers the potential to enable HCS to be performed with an unprecedented degree of miniaturization.
  
  
  METHODS
  This perspective highlights a real-world example from the authors’ work of HCS assays implemented in a highly miniaturized microfluidic format. The advantages of this technology are discussed, including cost savings, high-throughput screening on primary cells, improved accuracy, the ability to study complex time-varying stimuli, and ease of automation, integration and scaling.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The reader will understand the capabilities of anew microfluidics-based platform for HCS and the advantages it provides over conventional plate-based HCS.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Microfluidics technology will drive significant advancements and broader usage and applicability of HCS in drug discovery.
authors.affiliation: Johns Hopkins University, Department of Biomedical Engineering, 3400 N. Charles St., Baltimore, MD 21218, USA.
authors.forename: Raymond
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Cheong
authors.forename: Saurabh
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Paliwal
authors.forename: Andre
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Levchenko
mesh_terms: D018929:Cell Culture Techniques / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods; D004353:Drug Evaluation, Preclinical / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods*; D005786:Gene Expression Regulation; D046210:Microfluidic Analytical Techniques / Q000379:methods*; D015398:Signal Transduction