Design of Cross Type of Flow Channel to Control Orientation of Cell

摘要

A cross type of flow channel has been designed to control orientation of cell by direction of flow in vitro. The flow path (4 mm width, 0.2 mm height) is made between parallel transparent plates. Flow rate of 48 cm~3/hour is controlled by a syringe pump. The wall shear rate of 500 s~(-1) is calculated by the parabolic velocity profile between the parallel plates. The direction of the flow can be changed by alternative use of the inlet and outlet port of the cross type of the channel. The flow channel is placed in a chamber, where temperature and CO_2 content are kept 310 K and 5 percent, respectively. The chamber is placed on the stage of an inverted phase contrast microscope to observe the behavior of cells adhered on the wall under a flow. After several cells adhered to the disk, the wall shear rate was applied on the cells in the medium flow for 1 hour at each direction. C2C12 (mouse myoblast cell line) was exposed to the wall shear rate with the methodology. The experimental results show that the change of the direction of myoblasts can be observed by the cross type of flow channel.