Yamada Masumi, Kano Kyoko, Tsuda Yukiko, Kobayashi Jun, Yamato Masayuki, Seki Minoru, Okano Teruo
Institute of Advanced Biomedical Engineering and Science, Tokyo Women's Medical University, 8-1 Kawada-cho, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo, 162-8666, Japan.
Biomed Microdevices. 2007 Oct;9(5):637-45. doi: 10.1007/s10544-007-9055-5.
Liver is composed of various kinds of cells, including hepatic parenchymal cells (hepatocytes) and nonparenchymal cells, and separation of these cells is essential for cellular therapies and pharmacological and metabolic studies. Here, we present microfluidic devices for purely hydrodynamic and size-dependent separation of liver cells, which utilize hydrodynamic filtration. By continuously introducing cell suspension into a microchannel with multiple side-branch channels, cells smaller than a specific size are removed from the mainstream, while large cells are focused onto a sidewall in the microchannel and then separated into two or three groups. Two types of PDMS-glass hybrid microdevices were fabricated, and rat liver cells were successfully separated. Also, cell size, morphology, viability and several cell functions were analyzed, and the separation performances of the microfluidic devices were compared to that of a conventional centrifugal technique. The results showed that the presented microfluidic devices are low-cost and suitable for clinical use, and capable of highly functional separation with relatively high-speed processing.
肝脏由多种细胞组成，包括肝实质细胞（肝细胞）和非实质细胞，而分离这些细胞对于细胞治疗以及药理和代谢研究至关重要。在此，我们展示了用于基于纯流体动力学和尺寸依赖的肝细胞分离的微流控装置，该装置利用流体动力学过滤原理。通过将细胞悬液持续引入具有多个侧支通道的微通道中，小于特定尺寸的细胞从主流中被去除，而大细胞则被聚焦到微通道的侧壁上，然后被分离成两组或三组。制作了两种类型的聚二甲基硅氧烷-玻璃混合微装置，并成功分离了大鼠肝细胞。此外，还分析了细胞大小、形态、活力和几种细胞功能，并将微流控装置的分离性能与传统离心技术的分离性能进行了比较。结果表明，所展示的微流控装置成本低、适合临床使用，并且能够以相对高速的处理过程进行高功能分离。
