Microfluidics: Emerging prospects for anti-cancer drug screening

Figure 1 Explosive growth of the microfluidic Lab-on-a-Chip technologies. Note that the last decade brought a dramatic increase in the development of innovative microfabricated technologies aimed at studies of cells and biomolecules. These technologies attract a growing interest within the biomedical community, reflected by a logarithmic growth of publications on the subject. The Scopus database containing citations, abstracts and references covering 16 000 peer-reviewed titles from 4000 publishers was used to perform a bibliographical analysis spanning the period between 1989 and 2009. Study was based on the key word “microfluidic” and included two sets of variables: (dashed line) Total publications (database search from “Biology, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics and Engineering; Life and Health Sciences” collections), (solid line) Biomedical publications (database search from “Biology and Life and Health Sciences” collections). Analysis included only Articles and Reviews and excluded “In press” articles.