Soft Micro/Nano Devices for Fluid Infusion and Collection

Dear Colleagues,

Soft micro/nano devices for fluid infusion and collection are a promising technique to unravel the complex dynamics of neuronal brain activity in both a healthy brain and a disease context. Neurons communicate by releasing neurochemicals that diffuse across the synapse cleft to post-synaptic neurons or beyond the synapse to affect the neighboring neurons. Profiling these neurochemical dynamics in the brain extracellular space is challenging but definitely rewarding to correlate the neurochemical dynamics with behavior, drug effects, and disease progression. Microdialysis, as a well-established method, traditionally adopts a push–pull operation, relying on a tubing connected to a syringe pump and a semipermeable membrane that allows the neurochemical molecule to pass through. Adapting the most commonly used microdialysis probe to the collection of the neurochemicals with a larger molecular weight such as neuropeptides and neuroproteins, however, is impractical and undesirable due to technical limitations, such as extraction loss across the semipermeable membrane, low spatiotemporal resolution, and limited capability to collect larger neuropeptides and proteins. Therefore, it is highly needed to develop a soft platform that can deliver pharmacological stimulation to the brain regions of interest and collect brain fluid to obtain the neurochemical dynamics during the stimulation process with minimal invasion and high spatiotemporal resolution.

Accordingly, this Special Issue seeks to showcase research papers and review articles that focus on (1) novel designs, fabrication, control, and modeling of soft micro/nano devices for fluid management; (2) soft push–pull perfusion devices; (3) soft devices for large molecule (neuropeptide and protein) sampling; (4) soft membrane-free devices for biochemical sampling; (5) new developments of applying soft devices in the animal for drug delivery and interstitial fluid collection; and (6) others.

We look forward to receiving your submissions!

Dr. Guangfu Wu
Dr. Runhuai Yang
Guest Editors

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• Soft device for fluid infusion and collection
• Drug delivery and interstitial fluid sampling
• Neuropeptide and protein sampling
• Push-pull perfusion
• Membrane-free biochemical sampling