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World J Diabetes. Jan 15, 2023; 14(1): 17-25
Published online Jan 15, 2023. doi: 10.4239/wjd.v14.i1.17
Advances in microfluidic chips based on islet hormone-sensing techniques
Wei Li, You-Fan Peng
Wei Li, Department of Endocrinology, Suzhou Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Suzhou 234000, Anhui Province, China
You-Fan Peng, Department of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, The Affiliated Hospital of Youjiang Medical University for Nationalities, Baise 533000, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China
Author contributions: Li W and Peng YF designed the study; Li W wrote the manuscript; Li W and Peng YF revised the manuscript; and all authors approved the final version of the manuscript.
Supported by the Project of Suzhou Hospital of Anhui Medical University, No. 2020A1; and Natural Science Project of North Anhui Health Vocational College, No. WZK201907.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: You-Fan Peng, MD, PhD, Department of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, The Affiliated Hospital of Youjiang Medical University for Nationalities, No. 18 Zhongshan Er Road, Baise 533000, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, China. youfanpeng@yeah.net
Received: August 29, 2022
Peer-review started: August 29, 2022
First decision: October 30, 2022
Revised: November 11, 2022
Accepted: December 7, 2022
Article in press: December 7, 2022
Published online: January 15, 2023
Abstract

Diabetes mellitus is a global health problem resulting from islet dysfunction or insulin resistance. The mechanisms of islet dysfunction are still under investigation. Islet hormone secretion is the main function of islets, and serves an important role in the homeostasis of blood glucose. Elucidating the detailed mechanism of islet hormone secretome distortion can provide clues for the treatment of diabetes. Therefore, it is crucial to develop accurate, real-time, labor-saving, high-throughput, automated, and cost-effective techniques for the sensing of islet secretome. Microfluidic chips, an elegant platform that combines biology, engineering, computer science, and biomaterials, have attracted tremendous interest from scientists in the field of diabetes worldwide. These tiny devices are miniatures of traditional experimental systems with more advantages of time-saving, reagent-minimization, automation, high-throughput, and online detection. These features of microfluidic chips meet the demands of islet secretome analysis and a variety of chips have been designed in the past 20 years. In this review, we present a brief introduction of microfluidic chips, and three microfluidic chips-based islet hormone sensing techniques. We focus mainly on the theory of these techniques, and provide detailed examples based on these theories with the hope of providing some insights into the design of future chips or whole detection systems.

Keywords: Microfluidic chips, Islet hormone, Secretome, Diabetes, Sensing

Core Tip: Islet hormone secretome distortion is one of the main mechanisms of diabetes mellitus. How to detect the islet secretome in an accurate, real-time, labor-saving, high-throughput, automated, and cost-effective way is still challenging. Microfluidic chip technique has become popular and has demonstrated great advantages in hormone sensing and shown huge potential in resolving the above challenge. Here, we discuss three elegant microfluidic chips-based islet hormone-sensing techniques.