Development of Microfluidic Device for Imaging Paracrine Communication

Abstract

Cell communication via paracrine signaling plays a key role in cell responses induced by chemical stimulation in a living body. To elucidate the process in vitro, we proposed a microfluidic device, which allows the positioning of 2 cells and chemical stimulation to one of them with a simple fluidic control. This paper reports the microchannel design, its fabrication and numerical simulation of the flow. To demonstrate the device functions, we applied microparticles as a sample. The results show successful particle trapping.