Twelve-day medium pumping into tubular cell-laden scaffold using a lab-made PDMS connector
1 Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Ulsan, Ulsan, Republic of Korea
2 Department of Biological Science, University of Ulsan, Ulsan, Republic of Korea
3 Mobile Healthcare Laboratory, Samsung Advanced Institute Technology, Suwon, Republic of Korea
4 Department of Electronics and Control Engineering, Hanbat National University, Daejeon, Republic of Korea
5 Department of Electronics, Chungnam National University, Daejeon, Republic of Korea
6 Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Ulsan University Hospital, University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Ulsan, Republic of Korea
Abstract
In the current study, a method is proposed to supply culture medium into a two-layered cell-laden tubular scaffold in order to enhance cell proliferation, confluence, and viability. The two-layered cell-laden tubular scaffold was made of calcium-alginate mixed with fibroblast cells (NIH/3T3) using a lab-made double- coaxial laminar-flow generator. Afterwards, the tubular scaffold was connected to a syringe pump system using a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) micro-connector for long-term cell culture. Three medium pumping conditions were applied and compared: a heart-beat-mimicking pumping (20 µL/s, 1 s period, and 50 % pulse width), a continuous pumping (20 µL/s) and a non-pumping. Non-leaky connections between the tubular scaffolds and the micro-connector outlet were sustained for 13.5 ± 0.83 d in heartbeat-mimicking pumping and 11.8 ± 0.33 d in continuous pumping condition, due to the elasticity of the tubular scaffolds. Importantly, the two pumping conditions resulted in more cell proliferation, confluence, and viability than the non-pumping condition. Furthermore, analysis of newly-produced type-I collagen matrix indicated that the cells under the two pumping conditions formed a tissue-like structure. The proposed technique could further be applied to vascular co-culturing for vascular engineered tissue.
Graphical Abstract

Keywords
- Two-layered cell-laden
- calcium-alginate
- double-coaxial generator
- fibroblast
- long-term culturing
- media pumping
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