Fabrication of Oxygenation Microfluidic Devices for Cell Cultures

Current cell culture procedures that use normoxic (21%) oxygen concentrations have been proven to be physiologically inaccurate since the oxidation conditions in the human body ranges mostly between 1-13%. Recent studies have acknowledged this fact and have begun utilizing microfluidic devices to create an oxygen gradient to accurately depict the human physiology. While these studies have taken a step in the right direction, the gradient achieved is rather steep posing a spatial constraint in accurate testing. In order to address this problem we have fabricated microfluidic devices of five different specialized micro-channel architectures and tested them to find the optimal low rise oxygen gradient. Through fabrication and testing of multiple batches, we have determined that one of our specialized micro-channel designs (Architecture 3) has successfully produced a low rise oxygen gradient that provides ample spatial resolution to accurately pinpoint oxygen concentrations of interest, paving the way to improve the accuracy of cell culture techniques.