Abstract: This article describes a technology to transform a petri dish into a microfluidic chip with a stem cell nest for stem cell niche engineering. A permanent magnet sphere is put in a 30 mm petri dish as an oscillator pump (O-pump). An earphone-sized actuator outside the petri dish receives the programmed audio signal from an MP3 player or a mobile phone to drive the in-dish O-pump for a microflow. There are guiding walls to form a wake area for the cell nest at the dish's center. The cell nest uses the wake to create a stable, ultraslow internal microcirculation flow. The retention half-life of nanoparticles in the cell nest is 1419.8±1.3 s. By setting the microfluidic program and supplementing five drops of the culture medium outside the cell nest every 2 d, the growth rate of embryonic stem cells in the cell nest during the 8 d automatic culture appears significantly optimized. The single clone area of embryonic stem cells increases from (3.57±0.52)×105to (11.67±1.33)×105 µm2 after 2 d of the automatic culture and advances to (53.34±8.37)×105 µm2after 4 d.

Link: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/admt.202100045