{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,8,30]],"date-time":"2026-08-30T02:24:31Z","timestamp":1788056671853,"version":"build-2784847793"},"reference-count":62,"publisher":"Frontiers Media SA","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2021,11,23]],"date-time":"2021-11-23T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1637625600000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/501100000038","name":"Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","id":[{"id":"10.13039\/501100000038","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":["frontiersin.org"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Front. Bioeng. Biotechnol."],"abstract":"<jats:p>Microfluidic tumour spheroid-on-a-chip platforms enable control of spheroid size and their microenvironment and offer the capability of high-throughput drug screening, but drug supply to spheroids is a complex process that depends on a combination of mechanical, biochemical, and biophysical factors. To account for these coupled effects, many microfluidic device designs and operating conditions must be considered and optimized in a time- and labour-intensive trial-and-error process. Computational modelling facilitates a systematic exploration of a large design parameter space <jats:italic>via<\/jats:italic> in silico simulations, but the majority of in silico models apply only a small set of conditions or parametric levels. Novel approaches to computational modelling are needed to explore large parameter spaces and accelerate the optimization of spheroid-on-a-chip and other organ-on-a-chip designs. Here, we report an efficient computational approach for simulating fluid flow and transport of drugs in a high-throughput arrayed cancer spheroid-on-a-chip platform. Our strategy combines four key factors: i) governing physical equations; ii) parametric sweeping; iii) parallel computing; and iv) extensive dataset analysis, thereby enabling a complete \u201cfull-factorial\u201d exploration of the design parameter space in combinatorial fashion. The simulations were conducted in a time-efficient manner without requiring massive computational time. As a case study, we simulated &amp;gt;15,000 microfluidic device designs and flow conditions for a representative multicellular spheroids-on-a-chip arrayed device, thus acquiring a single dataset consisting of \u223c10 billion datapoints in \u223c95\u00a0GBs. To validate our computational model, we performed physical experiments in a representative spheroid-on-a-chip device that showed excellent agreement between experimental and simulated data. This study offers a computational strategy to accelerate the optimization of microfluidic device designs and provide insight on the flow and drug transport in spheroid-on-a-chip and other biomicrofluidic platforms.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3389\/fbioe.2021.781566","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2021,11,30]],"date-time":"2021-11-30T12:47:20Z","timestamp":1638276440000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3389\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":28,"title":["Computational Modelling and Big Data Analysis of Flow and Drug Transport in Microfluidic Systems: A Spheroid-on-a-Chip Study"],"prefix":"10.3389","volume":"9","author":[{"given":"Sina","family":"Kheiri","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Eugenia","family":"Kumacheva","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Edmond W.K.","family":"Young","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1965","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2021,11,23]]},"reference":[{"key":"B1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"337","DOI":"10.1007\/s11831-016-9165-4","article-title":"Parallelization Strategies for Computational Fluid Dynamics Software: State of the Art Review","volume":"24","author":"Afzal","year":"2017","journal-title":"Arch. 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