Well-based microfluidic chip for monitoring non-contacting cell-to-cell interactions through microchannel

Abstract

We present a new well-based microfluidic cell culture chip for monitoring non-contacting cell-to-cell interactions through micro-channels between chambers. The chip is fabricated with PDMS layers using SU-8 as molds. The fabricated chip was applied to monitor non-contacting cell-to-cell interaction between human glioblastoma cells and tau-engineered cells to study the association between malignant brain tumor and Alzheimer's disease (AD). Our results clearly demonstrated that the secreted components from glioblastoma cells enhanced tau aggregation. We have successfully demonstrated that the proposed well-based cell-to-cell interaction-monitoring chip can make two different cells interact through micro-channels without contacting each other using interactions between tau-BiFC cells and glioblastoma cells.