Enhancing cell distribution uniformity on diverse cell culture substrate via controlling microfluidics in perforated plate-based cell seeding device

Abstract

The distribution of cells has been identified as a significant determinant of cellular behavior and morphology, due to its impact on the level of cell-cell interactions. The process of seeding cells in in vitro cell culture remains reliant on traditional manual pipetting methods, despite the crucial significance of cellular distribution. Due to the potential limitations of manual pipetting in terms of ensuring consistent cell distribution and the consequent risk to the reproducibility of experimental results, there is a pressing need for an effective and methodical approach for achieving uniform seeding of cells. In this study, a novel cell seeding device, denoted as CellShower, was designed and fabricated using a perforated plate, allowing for uniform dispersion of cells across a large surface area of cell culture substrates. The operational tenets governing the CellShower are founded on microfluidics, and the configuration of the CellShower was optimized via numerical simulation. The CellShower exhibits exceptional versatility enabling its application on diverse culture substrates, ranging from conventional culture dishes to substrates characterized by nano-topographical, porous, and 3D concave structure