Creating Collagen 3D Microenvironment by Developing Pneumatic Actuated Soft Micromold (PASMO) for Biological Application

Abstract

Small volume, high surface area and protective fibulas scaffold of collagen modular microenvironment improves cell viability and proliferation. Therefore, the ability to produce collagen modular microenvironment accurately and reliably is of most importance to the advancement of tissue engineering. Currently, no such fabrication technique exists due to the inherent fragility of collagen. Herein, we report the very first platform that addresses such challenges. Pneumatic actuated soft micro mold (PASMO) composes asymmetric structure, which performs different mechanical properties. PASMO device is classified as particles’ template (top layer), air channel layer (middle layer) and resistance(bottom layer). The major deformation of PASMO is assigned to particles’ template layer because the mechanical property of particles’ template is less than resistance layer. Therefore, the deformation would form on particles’ template to expand and extract microparticles from PASMO device after increasing inner pressure. Soft micro mold with pneumatic extraction actuator not only can produce arbitrary shapes of collagen microstructures precisely but also can encapsulate cells inside without causing damage during the extraction process.

MDA-MB-231-GFP encapsulated in collagen microcubes can fully stretch and survive well. Moreover, MDA-MB-231-GFP in collagen microcubes can sense the treatment of Paclitaxel and the size of microcubes changed as following the different concentration of Paclitaxel due to the inhibition of cellar division. Furthermore, creating cancer microenvironment can efficiently localize cancer cells at the specific location so that it minimizes the varieties of experiments.

Another application is for cell therapy, like beta cells encapsulation for creating artificial islet. Artificial islets are micro-disk can secrete insulin based on the stimulation of glucose from the surrounding. Blood vessels can successfully form around the implanted artificial islets. This formation of the blood vessel for subcutaneous transplantation not only can regulate the level of glucose in blood but also can simplify surgery to avoid the risk. For multiple locations of implanted artificial islets clusters, blood vessels can also form connections between these two groups.