一种人血管内皮细胞与平滑肌细胞联合培养的微流控芯片

A microfluidic chip for co-culture of human vascular endothelial cells and smooth muscle cells

血管内皮细胞(endotheial cells,EC)和血管平滑肌细胞(smooth muscle cells,SMC)的相互作用失衡是动脉粥样硬化等心血管疾病发病的重要原因。目前这两种细胞联合培养模型一般为多细胞混合培养,不同细胞个体之间相互干扰,很难准确得到EC和SMC之间的作用机制,也无法实现动态检测活细胞内单细胞及亚细胞水平的变化。该文基于流体力学原理设计微流控内部通道结构和细胞培养腔室,采用改进的U型陷阱进行细胞抓捕;针对EC和SMC两种细胞在血管中的层次结构,分别设计了直接接触和非直接接触两种方式。选取PDMS(ploydimethylsiloxane)为材料,采用模塑法制作两种不同接触方式的芯片。分别在两种芯片内进行EC和SMC抓捕与培养,调整细胞浓度与灌流速度,通过显微镜动态观察细胞的捕获与生长状态,实现了单细胞水平的EC-SMC联合培养模型,为研究动脉粥样硬化等疾病的两种细胞相互作用提供了新的平台。

The imbalance of vascular endotheial cells（EC） and smooth muscle cells（SMC） interaction is the important cause of cardiovascular diseases such as atherosclerosis. Currently, most of the co-culture model just mixed these two kinds of cell, and it is difficult to observe the precise mechanism of action between EC and SMC since cells easily disturb with each other. It is also hard to detect the sub-cellular change in living cell dynamically. Based on fluid mechanics, a ＂U＂ type of trap for cell capture was used to design the interior channel structure and cell culture chambers of the microfludics with two kinds of cell interaction models, direct contact and indirect contact, for simulating the structure between EC and SMC in blood vessels. Ploydimethylsiloxane（PDMS） was chosen as the material to make the chips with molding method. EC and SMC were processed the capture and culture experiment on two chips with different cell concentration and flow speed to observe the cell growth state under microscope. The single cell EC-SMC co-culture microfludics were successfully established, which provided a powerful tool for the study of different cells interaction in diseases such as atherosclerosis.