Department of Information Science and Technology, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan.
Biofabrication. 2020 Aug 5;12(4):045021. doi: 10.1088/1758-5090/ab89cb.
Current microfluidic methods for cell-laden microfiber fabrication generally require larger than 100 μl of cell-suspensions. Since some 'rare' cells can be only acquired in small amounts, the preparation of >100 μl cell-suspensions with high-cell density can be both expensive and time consuming. Here, we present a facile method capable of fabricating cell-laden microfibers using small-volume cell-suspensions. The method utilizes a 3D-printed coaxial microfluidic device featured with a 'luer-lock inlet' to effectively load cell-suspensions in a deterministic volume (down to 5 μl) with a low sample-loss. In experiments, we demonstrate the formation of fibrous tissues consisting of various kinds of cells. Investigations on the morphology and function of the encapsulated cells show the viability of the cells is not significantly affected by the fabrication process, and also indicate the potential of using our method to perform quantitative assays on fiber-shaped tissues, while reducing the overall material and time consumption.
目前用于细胞填充微纤维制造的微流控方法通常需要大于 100μl 的细胞悬浮液。由于一些“稀有”细胞只能少量获得，因此制备具有高细胞密度的 >100μl 细胞悬浮液既昂贵又耗时。在这里，我们提出了一种使用小体积细胞悬浮液制造细胞填充微纤维的简便方法。该方法利用 3D 打印的同轴微流控装置，其具有“鲁尔锁入口”，可有效地以确定的体积（低至 5μl）装载细胞悬浮液，而损失的样品很少。在实验中，我们证明了由各种细胞组成的纤维组织的形成。对封装细胞的形态和功能的研究表明，细胞的活力不受制造过程的显著影响，这也表明我们的方法具有用于对纤维状组织进行定量分析的潜力，同时减少了整体材料和时间消耗。
