Design and Fabrication of a Microfluidic Device for Quantitative Analysis of Single Cell Migration and Invasive Assay

The cell migration and movement is a critical step in metastasis processes and moved from initial tumor to secondary through capillaries of lymphatic systems. Conventional methods for cell migration studies have significant limitation in study of cell heterogeneity and simulated the limited step in metastasis process which is moved cell through capillaries of lymphatic systems. Moreover, all of these systems are endpoint assays. In our study, we designed a microfluidic chip to study of cell migration, metastasis properties of cells and cell heterogeneity of cancer cells. In our designed pattern, there are several trapping shapes in main channel which the cells trapped in these positions. In addition, the narrow channels were designed in front of main channels which cell migrate through it and simulated the capillary of the lymphatic systems during metastasis process. In order to investigate the cell migration, we monitored the viability of the cells in microfluidic chip and the cell migration properties of MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231 cell lines and carried out statistical analysis on cell migration properties of both cell lines. Our results showed the microfluidic chip support cell growth on both cell lines. The theoretical and experimental results indicated the gradient of chemoattractant agent was generated in microfluidic chip. Our findings show that the mean velocity of MDA-MB-231 cells were greater than MCF-7 cells. Based on our result, the mean velocity of MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231 cell line were 18.4 µm.h-1 and 22.1 µm.h-1. ....