Microfluidic device for cytotoxicity screening

Cytotoxicity screening is important for the identification of different toxins and the quantification of toxin concentrations that can be detrimental to the proliferation of mammalian cells. Current cytotoxicity screening method requires initial cell seeding in 96-well cell culture plates and a large volume of culturing media, overall a time-consuming and resource-intensive process. We have developed a microfluidic device with internal structures that can evenly distribute cells across five chambers and requires only microliter volume of cell culturing media. In this study, we performed fluid dynamic simulations of different microfluidic designs with internal structures that can enhance the uniformity of distribution of cells in the initial seeding. We fabricated microfluidic devices with the optimal internal structures and performed several cell seeding experiments that showed high uniformity distribution of cells across all chambers. We have also performed cytotoxicity-screening experiments, using dimethyl sulfoxide and ethanol as toxins, to compare the performance between the microfluidic device and 96-well plate and the results showed close agreement between the two systems. Due to the generalizable design, this microfluidic device can be utilized in in vitro studies such as the response of cells to water-soluble factors such as anti-cancer drugs as well as the dynamic binding of anti-bodies to adherent cells