Issue 17, 2012

Heterotypic cell pair co-culturing on patterned microarrays

Abstract

We present a pair-wise co-culturing technique that creates large numbers of heterotypic cell pairs in patterned arrays. Lithographic patterning produces arrays with thousands of traps, each designed to accommodate only two cells and confine them at these sites for co-culturing. Two variants are introduced: a random seeding method that sediments a mixture of two cell types onto the array, and an approach that incorporates ferromagnetic thin films into the arrays and attracts cells that have been attached to ferromagnetic nanowires to the array sites through dipole interactions. The array technique includes the utilization of custom image analysis software that extracts data from multi-channel fluorescence images and records information about the cells in every trap, enabling the acquisition of accurate, high-statistics data. The applicability of the technique was demonstrated in experiments examining proliferation rates in pairs of bovine pulmonary artery endothelial and smooth muscle cells. Results demonstrated that heterotypic interactions favored smooth muscle cell proliferation while disfavoring endothelial cell proliferation. This is one example of a variety of cell-cell interactions that could be probed with this method.

Graphical abstract: Heterotypic cell pair co-culturing on patterned microarrays

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
26 Aug 2011
Accepted
09 May 2012
First published
10 May 2012

Lab Chip, 2012,12, 3117-3126

Heterotypic cell pair co-culturing on patterned microarrays

E. J. Felton, C. R. Copeland, C. S. Chen and D. H. Reich, Lab Chip, 2012, 12, 3117 DOI: 10.1039/C2LC40349H

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