Microfluidics in biomanufacturing process development

Biomanufacturing processes are expanding their capabilities due to an increasing demand for high-value products, chemicals, biofuels, and food. Recent trends in bioprocess development focus on scale down systems during early-stage to enable rapid and cost-effective experimentation. Microfluidic systems are powerful alternatives for biomanufacturing process development by enabling dynamic and high-throughput experiments, enhanced process control, and reduced operational volumes and times. Microfluidic setups are applied across the entire bioprocessing workflow, from upstream tasks such as strain development and cell growth to downstream processes including cell lysis and purification. The integration of sensors and automation are critical for obtaining high-quality data, which is key for process optimization and scale-up. This review summarizes the fundamentals of microfluidics, highlighting key features of this technology for biomanufacturing process development. The application of microfluidic systems for upstream and downstream processing optimization and scale-up are then discussed. Finally, challenges and future perspectives are presented, specifically fabrication technologies, automation, and artificial intelligence.