Abstract

3D Printed Microfluidic Gadget for Biomedical Daily Grind: From Culturing Tumor Spheroids to Niche Recapitulation

Liang Zhao, Associate Professor, Beijing University of Technology

Looking back the history of the microfluidics’ development, all the key surging points was initiated from the application of new fabrication modality, such as soft-lithography-based prototyping, which revolutionized this field by greatly lowering the accessibility of microfabrication. We believe the trend for lowering and democratizing the fabrication process should keep going on because biologists begin to harness the microengineering technologies to address the problems during biological experiments such as building and recapitulating organ-like functions on a transparent circuit with highly temporal-spatial controllable way. Herein we present an easy operating microfluidic physiological system that enables liver-tumor spheroids interactions within a 3D printing-cast-based microfluidic chip, recapitulating the liver-tumor microenvironment with an integrative format.