Evaluation of mechanical stimulus loading and response of a large number of cells using microfluidic channels

Abstract

In this paper, we proposed and evaluated a simple and effective microfluidic device to load mechanical stimuli to a large number of cells to investigate the correlation between gene expression and cell morphological changes. Firstly, we fabricated a microfluidic device using MEMS technology to apply a mechanical stimulus (compressive force) to cells. In particular, we modified the device to be able to collect a large number of cells for gene expression analysis. In our experiments, we achieved the compression of cells and cell nuclei. Furthermore, the deformation of each cell and cell nucleus could be accurately observed and a large number of cells could be collected for gene expression assays. Gene expression analysis of the recovered cells revealed that the induction of several characteristic genes occurred.