A novel on-chip element to provide mammalian cell cultivation and passaging to Labs-on-Chips

摘要

We present for the first time the long-term cultivation, passaging, and harvesting of mammalian cells outside of an incubator but inside a microfluidic chip fabricated by standard processes out of hard materials like silicon and glass. The presented device includes structures to supply the cells continuously but separately with gases and medium. Together with the harvesting option, this enables the future integration of analysis tools towards real Labs-on-Chips (LoC) applications. The cell culture chamber is separated from the supply channels by permeable membranes of agarose hydrogel. Consequently, the medium diffuses into the culture chamber which avoids shear stress on the cells. Our experiments show the successful seeding, culturing over 24 hours and harvesting of MDCK-cells.