An in-vitro cell culture system for accurately reproducing the coupled hemodynamic signals at the artery endothelium

Microfluidics has been an effective technology to reconstruct the in-vivo physiological hemodynamic microenvironment, which is significantly important for preventing and curing circulatory system-related diseases. However, these existing microfluidic systems have failed to accurately reproduce the arterial blood pressure, shear stress, circumferential strain, as well as their coupling relationship, and have not taken into account whether the cells at various locations in the culture chamber are subjected to consistent mechanical stimulation. To solve the above shortcomings, this study developed an in-vitro endothelial cell culture system (ECCS) containing a microfluidic chip and afterload components based on the hemodynamic principles to reappear the desired hemodynamic signals and their coupling relationship accurately, while a relatively uniform area of stress and strain distribution was selected in the microfluidic chip for a more reliable cell mechanobiology study. The sensitivity of global hemodynamic behaviors of the ECCS was analyzed, and numerical simulation and in-vitro experiments were implemented to verify the performance of the proposed ECCS. Finally, the cellular hemodynamic response was tested using human umbilical vein endothelial cells, demonstrating that the proposed in-vitro ECCS has better biological effectiveness. In general, the proposed ECCS in this study provided a more accurate and reliable tool for reproducing the in-vivo hemodynamic microenvironment and showed good potential in the mechanobiology study.