New Equipment and Devices for Therapeutic Purpose

摘要

In this special issue of International Neurourology Journal (INJ),we would like to introduce new equipment and devices. Thevaluable articles recruited for publication in this issue illustratepossibilities of for the development of new therapeutic technologies.Microfluidics is the field of science and technology that dealswith fluids on very small scales, usually in the range of microliters(10-6 L) to picoliters (10-12 L); it has several advantages, includingthe low consumption of samples, a short analysis time,and high sensitivity [1,2]. Microfluidic devices for urologicalresearch are introduced in this issue. The authors show that microfluidicdevices are a useful technology for detecting prostateand bladder cancers and characterizing cancer microenvironments[3]. Applications in biomarker detection, urine nanofluidics,and sperm analysis are natural extensions of this technology.Microfluidics has been used to design nanoparticles thatidentify specific transmembrane antigens, such as prostate-specificmembrane antigen, suggesting the possibility of ultrafinetargeted therapies [4]. While the current technology mostly allowsfor planar photolithographic designs that limit microfluidiccircuitry to serpentine networks, at best, 3-dimensionalprinted microfluidic designs are already in development [5,6].This will enable additional control and complexity. The importanceof these single-cell applications is not only that they havethe novel aspect of addressing the cell itself, instead of the surroundingtissue, but that they clearly have the capacity to exertextremely fine control over biological environments. In someapplications, it has already been estimated that fine controlthrough microfluidics exceeds what can be accomplished viathe robotic handling of fluids [7]. Considering that one branchof microfluidics, optofluidics has demonstrated the capability tosort particles, the future use of microfluidics may focus less onprecision, and more on expanding its applications in novel ways[8,9].