Engineering Soluble Microenvironments in Microfluidic Systems

Abstract

Highly functional in vitro cultured cells are of great usefulness in various applications such as cell-based testing, constructing large tissues and pathological research. The key to culturing functional cells in vitro is to recapitulate an in vivo-like cellular microenvironment which allows extensive mechanical support as well as cell-cell, cell-matrix and cell-soluble factor interactions. This thesis demonstrates the strategy of engineering soluble microenvironments in microfluidic cell culture systems for various cell types, which significantly enhanced the biological functions of either primary cells or cell lines. It can be potentially used as a general drug testing platform.