Microfluidic Self-assembly of Tumor Spheroids

Creating multicellular tumor spheroids is critical for characterizing anti-cancer treatments since it may provide a better model than monolayer culture of in vivo tumors. Moreover, continuous dynamic perfusion allows the establishment of physiologically-relevant drug profiles to exposed spheroids. Here we present a physiologically-inspired design allowing microfluidic self-assembly of spheroids, formation of uniform spheroid arrays, and characterization of spheroid dynamics all in one platform.Our microfluidic device is based on hydrodynamic trapping of cancer cells in controlled geometries and the formation of spheroids is enhanced by maintaining compact groups of the trapped cells due to continuous perfusion.It was found that spheroid formation speed and size uniformity increased with increased flow rate. A large amount of tumor spheroids spheroids with a narrow size distribution can be formed in the device to provide a good platform for anticancer drug assays.

Fig 1: Image of a single trap with spheroid formed.

Fig 2: Characterization of spheroid development.

Fig 3: Schematic of trapping array structure.

References:

Liz Y. Wu, Dino Di Carlo, Luke P. Lee, Microfluidic self-assembly of tumor spheroids for anticancer drug discovery, Biomedical Microdevices (2007).