A pumpless cell culture chip with the constant medium perfusion-rate maintained by balanced droplet dispensing

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

<P>This paper presents a pumpless cell culture chip, where a constant-rate medium perfusion is achieved by balanced droplet dispensing. Previous pumpless cell culture chips, where the gravity-driven flow is induced by gradually decreasing the hydraulic-head difference, Δ<I>h</I>, between source and drain reservoirs, result in a decreasing perfusion-rate. However, the present pumpless cell culture chip, where autonomous droplet dispensers are integrated on the source reservoirs, results in a constant perfusion-rate using a constant Δ<I>h</I> maintained by balanced droplet dispensing between the source-inlet and the drain-outlet. In the experimental study, constant perfusion-rates of 0.1, 0.2, and 0.3 μl min<SUP>−1</SUP> are obtained by Δ<I>h</I> of 38, 76, and 114 mm, respectively. At the constant perfusion-rate (<I>Q</I> = 0.2 μl min<SUP>−1</SUP>), H358 lung cancer cells show the maximum growth-rate of 57.8 ± 21.1% d<SUP>−1</SUP>, which is 1.9 times higher than the 30.2 ± 10.3% d<SUP>−1</SUP> of the static culture. At a perfusion-rate varying between 0.1–0.3 μl min<SUP>−1</SUP> (average = 0.2 μl min<SUP>−1</SUP>), however, the H358 cells show a growth-rate of 46.9 ± 8.3% d<SUP>−1</SUP>, which is lower than that of the constant <I>Q</I> of 0.2 μl min<SUP>−1</SUP>. The constant-rate perfusion culture (<I>Q</I> = 0.1, 0.2, and 0.3 μl min<SUP>−1</SUP>) also results in an average cell viability of 89.2%, which is higher than 75.9% of the static culture. This pumpless cell culture chip offers a favorable environment to cells with a high growth-rate and viability, thus having potential for use in cell-based bio-assays.</P> <P>Graphic Abstract</P><P>This paper presents a pumpless cell culture chip, where a constant-rate medium perfusion is achieved by balanced droplet dispensing.
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