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Publisher: Amsterdam [u.a.] : Elsevier Science × Subject: Microfluidics ×

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    A customizable microfluidic platform for medium-throughput modeling of neuromuscular circuits
    (Amsterdam [u.a.] : Elsevier Science, 2019) Bellmann, Jessica; Goswami, Ruchi Y.; Girardo, Salvatore; Rein, Nelly; Hosseinzadeh, Zohreh; Hicks, Michael R.; Busskamp, Volker; Pyle, April D.; Werner, Carsten; Sterneckert, Jared
    Neuromuscular circuits (NMCs) are vital for voluntary movement, and effective models of NMCs are needed to understand the pathogenesis of, as well as to identify effective treatments for, multiple diseases, including Duchenne's muscular dystrophy and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Microfluidics are ideal for recapitulating the central and peripheral compartments of NMCs, but myotubes often detach before functional NMCs are formed. In addition, microfluidic systems are often limited to a single experimental unit, which significantly limits their application in disease modeling and drug discovery. Here, we developed a microfluidic platform (MFP) containing over 100 experimental units, making it suitable for medium-throughput applications. To overcome detachment, we incorporated a reactive polymer surface allowing customization of the environment to culture different cell types. Using this approach, we identified conditions that enable long-term co-culture of human motor neurons and myotubes differentiated from human induced pluripotent stem cells inside our MFP. Optogenetics demonstrated the formation of functional NMCs. Furthermore, we developed a novel application of the rabies tracing assay to efficiently identify NMCs in our MFP. Therefore, our MFP enables large-scale generation and quantification of functional NMCs for disease modeling and pharmacological drug targeting. © 2019 The Authors
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    From microfluidics to hierarchical hydrogel materials
    (Amsterdam [u.a.] : Elsevier Science, 2023) Weigel, Niclas; Li, Yue; Fery, Andreas; Thiele, Julian
    Over the past two decades, microfluidics has made significant contributions to material and life sciences, particularly via the design of nano-, micro- and mesoscale materials such as nanoparticles, micelles, vesicles, emulsion droplets, and microgels. Unmatched in control over a multitude of material parameters, microfluidics has also shed light on fundamental aspects of material design such as the early stages of nucleation and growth processes as well as structure evolution. Exemplarily, polymer hydrogel particles can be formed via microfluidics with exact control over size, shape, functionalization, compartmentalization, and mechanics that is hardly found in any other processing method. Interestingly, the utilization of microfluidics for material design largely focuses on the fabrication of single entities that act as reaction volume for organic and cell-free biosynthesis, cell mimics, or local environment for cell culturing. In recent years, however, hydrogel design has shifted towards structures that integrate a large variety of functions, e.g., to address the demands for sensing tasks in a complex environment or more closely mimicking architecture and organization of tissue by multiparametric cultures. Hence, this review provides an overview of recent literature that explores microfluidics for fabricating hydrogel materials that go well beyond common length scales as well as the structural and functional complexity of microgels necessary to produce hierarchical hydrogel structures. We focus on examples that utilize microfluidics to design microgel-based assemblies, on microfluidically made polymer microgels for 3D bioprinting, on hydrogels fabricated by microfluidics in a continuous fashion, like fibers, and on hydrogel structures that are shaped by microchannels.