Abstract
In recent years, in order to achieve successful artificial organ transplant and drug screening test, the establishment of in vitro cell environment system is of extreme importance. Several attempts to preserve liver cell function in vivo have been reported. We have created a Tapered Stencil for Cluster Culture (TASCL) device for large-scale production of cell aggregates with uniform quality. The TASCL device can be easily installed on culture plate with tweezers. In this study, we report the functional evaluation of three-dimensional liver cell spheroids formed in a TASCL device. The TASCL device was fabricated with an overall size of 10 mm × 10 mm with 400 microwells. Each microwell had a top aperture (500 μm × 500 μm) and bottom aperture (300 μm diameter circular). Using the TASCL device, we evaluated the formation of liver cell spheroids and determined their sizes. The formation of liver cell spheroids was nearly 100%, and the size of liver cell spheroids increased with an increase of cell seeding number. The liver cell spheroids obtained using the TASCL device were alive and produced albumin. Our TASCL device will be applied to toxicity evaluation system for drug discovery.
