Collection method of rabbit cornea cells by a pumping system using acoustic radiation pressure

Abstract

This study proposes a novel collection method of cell suspension using acoustic radiation pressure. The method enables to collect rabbit cornea cells by a pumping system using acoustic radiation pressure. To confirm our concept, we fabricated the pumping system composed of a reusable cell cultivation device with piezoelectric ceramic disc to generate acoustic radiation pressure, and a peripheral equipment to collect cell suspension, such as a pipe. The concentration of the suspension collected by the pumping system was comparable to the conventional method, pipetting. Furthermore, we counted the number of cells that were cultured for 72 h after collected by either proposed or conventional collection method, in order to compare the cell proliferation. As a result, the cells collected by the developed pumping system had higher proliferative ability than that of cells collected by the conventional method. This suggests that cell aggregations, often appear in the suspension, were removed through a small gap between the culture surface and the pipe end. As a result, cells could be cultured efficiently. The proposed cell collection method can be a promising cell collection method for cell culturing process.