Miniaturized electrophoresis: an evolving role in laboratory medicine.

The promise of capillary electrophoresis (CE) for supplanting conventional methods in the clinical laboratory led to intense interest in this analytical tool a decade ago. Since then, a number of clinical applications have been defined along with those that have impacted the pharmaceutical, environmental, and forensic arenas. Concurrent with the development of CE applications was the emergence of electrophoresis in the microchip format. The main attraction of this platform, the ability to execute high-resolution separations in a few hundred seconds, was not its only attribute. The capability for parallel processing of separations was complemented by the potentialfor integrating sample preparation into the same device. This Review highlights recent progress towards CE and microchip electrophoresis as clinical diagnostic tools, with literature coverage from 1996 to 2000.