Growing organoids and spheroids on a chip

Abstract

Organoids have gained significant interests in the recent years to recapitulate organ development and disease progression in-vitro for personalized medicine. We propose a microfluidic chip design to grow organoids and spheroids of more uniform size and shape with minimal intervention. The hybrid design of the microfluidic chip allows to open and close culture wells using a reversibly bonded cover sheet. By combining the advantages of open wells similar to the conventional microplate wells and the sealed channel of microfluidic chips, cells can directly be pipetted into individual wells and continuously perfused after sealing. We demonstrated the concept of the hybrid chip by growing spheroids out of mouse embryonic fibroblasts and characterized the uniformity of their size and shape.