A multicellular tumor spheroid formation and extraction chip

Abstract

This paper presents a multicellular tumor spheroid formation and extraction chip using removable cell trapping barriers. The previous spheroid formation chips using fixed cell trapping barriers have difficulties in extracting the formed spheroids. The present spheroid chip, however, achieves simple spheroid extraction using the removable cell trapping barriers formed by membrane inflation. A 4 by 1 array of the spheroid chips has been designed, fabricated and characterized. The experimental study demonstrates that the spheroid chip is capable to form, culture, and extract the multicellular tumor spheroids having the diameter of 197.2α11.7µm with the cell viability of 80.3α7.7%. The uniform size and viability of the extracted spheroids increase the continuity, effectiveness and reliability of the next stage of biomedical spheroid study.