Evaluation of the effect of flow pattern on cell differentiation seeded in microchannel

Abstract

Within a MPS (microphysiological system), which mimics the in-vivo environment in vitro, the morphology of cells changes depending on the shear stress and its variations induced by the fluid flow. In this study, we aim to understand these morphological changes of cells seeded in a microchannel by flow control via an ACET (AC electrothermal) pump installed in the microchannel, and we evaluated the osteoblast differentiation of hMSCs (human mesenchymal stem cells) under the pulsatile flow condition using the ACET pump by comparing with that under the static condition. In the experiment, it was found that osteoblasts differentiated under the pulsatile flow condition show a higher rate of differentiation than those under the static condition, demonstrating that pulsatile flow promotes the differentiation of hMSCs into osteoblasts.