Microfluidic technology for making string-like cell tissues

In recent years, attention has been focused on techniques for creating small organs in microfluidic devices for medical and pharmaceutical applications. Especially in the research field of new drug development, it is strongly desired to put an organ device into practical use because animals for the drug efficacy test can be replaced with an artificial organ in the device. On the other hand, the development of those devices requires various techniques to shape multiple types of cells into the desired figures and place them in specific locations within the microchannel. Manipulating cells sized from a few micrometers to tens of micrometers in a microchannel is difficult and often requires specialized skills for arranging cells by type. Therefore, we devised a simple method for culturing aligned cells in a microchannel. Anyone can easily align and culture cells at specific position in the microchannel by simply dropping 20 - 100 μL of cell solution onto the inlet port of the channel. We have demonstrated the functionality of this microchannel by culturing HUVECs in the device for 3 days to 1 week. The cells were gently cultured in the microchannel by changing the medium at a flow rate of several μL / min. After 3 days, it was confirmed that the aligned cells were connected to each other by adjacent cells. As a result, we succeeded in culturing elongated cellular tissues in an environment with low shear stress using our original microfluidic device. As a future development, we are planning to create an artificial organ by combining multiple types of string-like cell tissues.