Discussions

Moleculonics.

The big picture: Microfluidics is the technology of fluids manipulation on micro or nanometer scales. It is a multidisciplinary field borrowing from condensed matter physics, micro and nanotechnology, chemistry and biology. This emerging field has the potential to play, for biological and chemical objects (molecules, cells) the same role as microelectronics and the onset of microprocessors has played for digital information. It has been a mandatory enabling role in the explosive current development of “omics”, as the “hidden engine” within numerous key technologies such as next generation sequencing, single molecule and single cell analysis…. So far, however, this technology has remained mostly confined to research laboratories, by its complexity and cost. Bringing to direct daily life (e.g. medicine, prevention, well-being, health, food industry, environment, or security), the power of omics and systems biology, major breaktroughs must be made to “democratize” microfluidics.

The work needed: To achieve the above goals, one needs to develop “microprocessors for molecules”, or “moleculonics”, following a roadmap similar to the one that brought us from mainframe computers to smartphones The principle is the same, i.e. combine progress in miniaturization, automation, power consumption reduction, and friendly interfaces to the “macroscopic world”, except that molecules must be manipulated instead of (or rather, together with) electrons and photons. This involves in particular breakthroughs in the “world to chip interface”, in order to directly accommodate in microfluidic systems the samples of interest, at the point of care or point of collection. This also requires the development of low-cost “hybrid” technologies combining microfluidic and electronic functions. This will require the integration of radical changes in microfluidics (in particular moving from “chip in the lab” from “lab in the chip”), the use of innovative polymer and biomaterials, micro and nanoparticles, soft devices, thermoplastic, paper or textile devices for low cost mass production.

The opportunity: This development is timely, for several reasons:
- The penetration of “omics-related” drugs, diagnoses and biomarkers are rapidly penetrating medicine, making adapted screening tools highly needed.
- There is an even stronger potential demand in numerous other areas of life, well being, sports, food, which is currently unexplored but will follow in the wake of diagnosis: For instance, there is currently an explosive development of connected tools to monitor various physical parameters, such as weight, heartbeat, calories consumtion, quality of sleep, etc…. These only represent a limited set of parameters, and extending this monitoring to molecular information and biomarkers, i.e. include molecules into the “internet of things” and “e-health” will open new avenues, in particular the silver economy.
- This development is also timely on the technological ground, since microfluidics has reached a high level of power and reliability in the laboratory context, and microelectronics is following democratization routes that brings it closer to the materials and fabrication technologies usable for microfluidic applications (e.g. organic, flexible, paper electronics).

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