Cell Migration with Microfluidic Chips

Cell migration plays important roles for a variety of physiological and pathological processes including but not limited to host defense, cancer metastasis and embryogenesis, wound healing and inflammation, most of which can be guided by diverse biochemical and biophysical factors. A detailed understanding of individual factor or integrated factors in controlled condition that induces directed cell migration is essential for studying the dynamic and complex behaviors in vivo and capable of improved tissue engineering and therapeutic strategies. Based on this, a number of in vitro assays have been developed to study the complex guiding mechanisms for cell migration. However, those assays are typically end-point detection which is limited by the inability to sustain the stimuli for a long time. Another limitation with traditional assays is high through-put detection. Recently, the design of the standard cell migration assay has incorporated microfluidic platforms, which have opened up new possibilities for exploring the migration in a better control of cellular microenvironment. Cell-attractive and cell-repellant factors involved in cell migration, single or integrated, can be precisely studied in microfluidic devices, some of which have already been developed for medical and commercial applications. In this part, we present recent developments in microfluidic-based cell migration studies and potential trends in this field.