Microscale instruments and processing are essentially the future of medical research as well as the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. Microfluidic devices hold the promise of a small analytical laboratory on a chip to identify, separate, and purify cells, biomolecules, toxins, and other materials. They would perform these tasks with greater speed, sensitivity, efficiency, and affordability than standard instruments. The area of microfluidics and its applications is inherently interdisciplinary and far-reaching. The field has been developing during the past 10 years, but most of that development, while intense, has been in isolated modules. Now scientists are ready to begin putting the pieces together into systems.
According to a soon-to-be-released updated report from Business Communications Company, Inc, RGB-226R Microfluidics Technology, the worldwide market for microfluidic based systems and devices is currently estimated at $950 million. With companies active in this sector experiencing rapid growth in size and number of products at commercialization stage, this market is expected to climb at an average annual growth rate (AAGR) of 15.5% to $1.95 billion in 2008.
New developments in fluidics, microelectronics, and detection systems have enabled microfluidics to move from theory to commercial reality in only a few years. The major impact of such systems and devices is likely to be in the $10 billion analytical laboratory instrumentation market, where ''labs-on-a-chip'' will improve throughput and workflow. With the high cost of drug development and the pressure to reduce the drug development cycle time, high throughput screening and lab-on-a-chip technologies have garnered the most attention of the microfluidic areas of application. Hence, 37% of the total current revenue comes from these areas.
The field of microfluidics is considered to be about 10 years old. In the past couple of years, research and development for clinical diagnostic systems based on microfluidic technologies has increased tremendously. The chips consume sample material and reagents only in extremely low volumes. Individual small chips can be inexpensive and disposable. In addition, time from sampling to result tends to be very short. The most advanced chip designs can perform all analytical functions -- sampling; sample pretreatment; separation, dilution, and mixing steps; chemical reactions; and detection -- in a single integrated microfluidic circuit. Microfluidic systems allow designers to create small, portable, rugged, low-cost, and easy-to-use diagnostic instruments that offer high levels of capability and versatility. Microfluidics -- fluids flowing in microchannels -- makes possible the design of analytical devices and assay formats that would not function on a larger scale.
The science of microfluidics touches many areas and a great deal has been learned from the semiconductor industry. Concurrently, advances in microelectronics are enabling unprecedented innovation. An analogy can be drawn between the miniaturization of computers and the miniaturization of laboratory systems. Many of the challenges introduced by the chip size are being overcome and will allow this area to grow exponentially.
Patent activity has been frenetic and with more devices preparing to be commercialized, the traditional obstacles of user acceptance and technical precision should be dealt with in the next two years. Once microfluidic devices become part of the regular laboratory operations and scientists adopt them as tools, sales will increase rapidly.