Simple Fabrication of Multicomponent Heterogeneous Fibers for Cell Co‐Culture via Microfluidic Spinning

Abstract

Microfluidic spinning, as a combination of wet spinning and microfluidic technology, has been used to develop microfibers with special structures to facilitate cell 3D culture/co‐culture and microtissue formation in vitro. In this study, a simple microchip‐based microfluidic spinning strategy is presented for the fabrication of multicomponent heterogeneous calcium alginate microfibers. The use of two kinds of microchip enables the one‐step preparation of multicomponent heterogeneous microfibers with various arrangement patterns, including the preparation of one‐, two‐, and three‐component microfibers by a two‐layer microchip and preparation of four component microfibers with different arrangement by a membrane‐sandwiched three‐layer microchip. The obtained microfibers could be used to encapsulate various kinds of cells, such as the human non‐small cell lung cancer cell NCI‐H1650, the human fetal lung fibroblast HFL1, the normal pulmonary bronchial epithelial cell 16HBE, and human umbilical vein endothelial cells. By adding chitosan to the medium to keep the fibers stable, 3D long‐term in vitro cell co‐culture has been carried out up to 21 days. This method is very simple and easy to operate, continuously produces spatially well‐defined heterogeneous microfibers, has important applications for composite functional biomaterials, and shows great potential in organs‐on‐a‐chip and biomimetic systems.

Biofabrication of natural hydrogels for cardiac, neural, and bone Tissue engineering Applications

“…Microfluidic spinning consists of creating biofibers in a microchannel by co-flowing a prepolymer and a crosslinker in a coaxial fashion [ 42 , 69 ]. Fibers with a variety of structures can be produced by microfluidic spinning; this includes flat fibers, spiral curls, solid cylinders, Janus structures, hollow tubes, and bamboo-like architectures using coaxial laminar flows [ 70 ].…”

Isotropic and Anisotropic Scaffolds for Tissue Engineering: Collagen, Conventional, and Textile Fabrication Technologies and Properties

“…Microfluidic wet spinning can be used to produce filaments that are difficult or impossible to produce using standard wet spinning methods such as filaments made from globular proteins [156], colloidal particles [157], nanocellulose [158], collagen [159], and filaments with incorporated cells [160]. In addition, this method is used to produce filaments on a small laboratory scale such as for calcium alginate filaments [161], polychromatic filaments [162], and silk filaments [163], although spinning would also be feasible using standard wet-spinning methods. Unlike standard wet spinning, microfluidic wet spinning is not currently used to produce multifilament yarns because the flat two-dimensional microfluidic systems are not suitable for producing multicomponent multifilament threads.…”

Recent Advances in Microfluidic Platforms for Programming Cell‐Based Living Materials

“…a) Adapted under the terms of the Creative Commons CC BY license. [ 166 ] Copyright 2020, The Authors, published by Wiley‐VCH. b) Left: Adapted with permission.…”