Microenvironmental Analysis and Control for Local Cells under Confluent Conditions via a Capillary-Based Microfluidic Device

Abstract

Sophisticated functions of biological tissues are supported by small biological units of cells that are localized within a region of 100 μm scale. The cells in these units secrete molecules to form their microenvironment to play a vital role in biological functions. Various microfluidic devices have been developed to analyze the microenvironment but were not designed for cells in a culture dish in a confluent condition, a typical setup for cell and tissue cultivation. This study presents a novel glass capillary-based microfluidic device for studying confluent cells in a culture dish. The multiple capillaries allow the device to confine the local flow in 100 μm or smaller scale to form two adjacent regions with different chemical properties; it can simultaneously perform local cell stimulation and collect secreted molecules from the stimulated cells. Cell removal was achieved upon trypsin stimulation from a limited area (3.8 × 10–3 ± 1.0 × 10–3 mm2), which corresponded to 7.6 ± 2.0 cells, using the mouse skeletal myoblast cell line (C2C12 cells) in a confluent condition. Microenvironmental analysis was demonstrated by measuring the secreted tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) collected from the microenvironment of the stimulated and unstimulated mouse leukemic monocyte cell line (RAW264 cells) to track temporal changes in the TNF-α production. The TNF-α secreted from stimulated cells was approximately four-fold higher than that from unstimulated cells in 90 min. This device enables local cell stimulation and the collection of secreted molecules for cells under confluent conditions, which contributes to the analysis of the cellular microenvironment.