Three-dimensional cell culture based on microfluidic techniques to mimic living tissues.

This mini-review consists of microfluidic fabrication methods of cellular spheroids and cell-laden hydrogels, and their applications for tissue engineering. Using microfluidic devices, cellular spheroids and cell-laden hydrogels with controllable design are formed reproducibly. Owing to their size uniformity, they are used as building blocks for bottom-up tissue engineering to construct uniform and arbitrarily shaped tissues. Thus, cellular spheroids and cell-laden hydrogels based on microfluidic techniques are powerful tools to create tissues for human implantation and the treatment of diseases.