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Concept
Microfluidic cell culture
Summary
Microfluidic cell culture integrates knowledge from biology, biochemistry, engineering, and physics to develop devices and techniques for culturing, maintaining, analyzing, and experimenting with cells at the microscale. It merges microfluidics, a set of technologies used for the manipulation of small fluid volumes (μL, nL, pL) within artificially fabricated microsystems, and cell culture, which involves the maintenance and growth of cells in a controlled laboratory environment. Microfluidics has been used for cell biology studies as the dimensions of the microfluidic channels are well suited for the physical scale of cells (in the order of magnitude of 10 micrometers). For example, eukaryotic cells have linear dimensions between 10 and 100 μm which falls within the range of microfluidic dimensions. A key component of microfluidic cell culture is being able to mimic the cell microenvironment which includes soluble factors that regulate cell structure, function, behavior, and growth. Another important component for the devices is the ability to produce stable gradients that are present in vivo as these gradients play a significant role in understanding chemotactic, durotactic, and haptotactic effects on cells.
Some considerations for microfluidic devices relating to cell culture include:
fabrication material (e.g., polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), polystyrene)
culture region geometry
control system for delivering and removing media when needed using either passive methods (e.g., gravity-driven flow, capillary pumps, or Laplace pressure based ‘passive pumping’) or a flow-rate controlled device (i.e., perfusion system)
Fabrication material is crucial as not all polymers are biocompatible, with some materials such as PDMS causing undesirable adsorption or absorption of small molecules. Additionally, uncured PDMS oligomers can leach into the cell culture media, which can harm the microenvironment. As an alternative to commonly used PDMS, there have been advances in the use of thermoplastics (e.g., polystyrene) as a replacement material.
Official source
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