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A porous 3D cell culture micro device for cell migration study

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Abstract

Cell migration under chemoattractant is an important biological step in cancer metastasis that causes the spread of malignant tumor cells. Porous polymeric materials are widely used to mimic the extracellular matrix (ECM) environment for applications such as three dimensional (3D) cell culturing and tissue engineering. In this paper we report a novel 3D cell culture device based on porous polymeric material to study cancer migration. We fabricated a porous channel on a polymeric chip using a selective ultrasonic foaming method. We demonstrate that a chemical concentration gradient could be established through the porous channel due to the slow diffusion process. We show that significant cell migration could be observed through the porous channel within 1–2 weeks of cell culturing when metastatic M4A4-GFP breast cancer cells were induced by 20% fetal bovine serum (FBS).We also developed a mathematical model to evaluate the diffusivity and concentration gradient through the fabricated porous structure.

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Acknowledgements

This research was partially supported through grants from NIH (5R21EB008573) and NSF (CMMI0348767). We acknowledge Mr. Nicholas Vaccaro for help in SEM imaging and Mr. Zhe Xu for help in machining. SEM and confocal images were taken at University of Washington Nanotechnology User Facility Center.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 98195-2600, USA

    Liang Ma, Changchun Zhou & Wei Li

  2. Swedish Medical Center, Seattle, WA, 98122, USA

    Biaoyang Lin

  3. Department of Urology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 98195, USA

    Biaoyang Lin

  4. Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, 78712, USA

    Wei Li

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  1. Liang Ma
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  2. Changchun Zhou
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  3. Biaoyang Lin
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  4. Wei Li
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Correspondence to Wei Li.

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Ma, L., Zhou, C., Lin, B. et al. A porous 3D cell culture micro device for cell migration study. Biomed Microdevices 12, 753–760 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10544-010-9429-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10544-010-9429-y

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