Hydrodynamic shuttling for deterministic high-efficiency multiple single-cell capture in a microfluidic chip

Lab Chip. 2019 Apr 9;19(8):1370-1377. doi: 10.1039/c9lc00036d.

Abstract

Studies on cellular heterogeneity have emerged as a powerful approach for developing new strategies to treat diseases including cancer. However, it is difficult to set up an in vitro co-culture experiment to study the interaction of individual live cells. In this paper, we report a hydrodynamic shuttling chip (HSC) which can deterministically capture single cells into microfluidic chambers to set up multiple single-cell co-culture experiments in which individual live cells can be microscopically observed. Using this chip device, we demonstrated a triple single-cell culture of oral squamous cell carcinoma and lymphatic endothelial cells to observe the effect of cell-cell interaction on the cell motility. Triple, single-cell pairing efficiency by our HSC device was eightfold higher than that of the probabilistic method. Using this HSC device, we were able to perform triple-culture experiments to show the cell type-dependent motility of oral squamous cell carcinoma and lymphatic endothelial cells, which was not observed in co-culture experiments.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Carcinoma, Squamous Cell / pathology
  • Cell Line, Tumor
  • Cell Separation / instrumentation*
  • Endothelial Cells / cytology
  • Equipment Design
  • Humans
  • Hydrodynamics*
  • Lab-On-A-Chip Devices*
  • Mouth Neoplasms / pathology
  • Single-Cell Analysis / instrumentation*