Processing of nanolitre liquid plugs for microfluidic cell-based assays

Comparisons of cell culture medium using distribution of morphological features in microdevice

As the number of available cell types grows, it becomes necessary to develop more effective ways to optimize the cell-culture medium for each cell line and culture condition. However, because of the vast number of parameters that must be decided, such as the combination of components, optimization is both laborious and costly. Microdevices are a cost-effective way to perform such evaluations because they use only a small volume of media and enable high-throughput analyses. However, assays performed in microdevices are themselves minimized, and each assay unit (well/chamber) commonly contains an insufficient number of cells for comprehensive evaluations such as gene-expression or flow-cytometry analyses. To address this issue, we introduced image-based analysis in conjunction with microdevice assays; this approach allows quantification of every cell in each assay unit. To quantitatively profile differences in cellular behaviors in a microdevice under different culture media conditions, we developed a non-staining image-based analysis method that utilizes cellular morphology. Our approach combines the structural advantages of microdevices, which can increase the stability of images, and the quantitative advantages of an image-based cell evaluation technique that utilizes time-course population change in several morphological features. Our results demonstrate that cellular changes due to small alterations in the concentration of serum in medium or differences in the basal medium can be profiled using only microscopic images.