Abstract
Keeping the oxygen concentration at the desired physiological limits is a challenging task in cellular microfluidic devices. A good knowledge of affecting parameters would be helpful to control the oxygen delivery to cells. This study aims to provide a fundamental understanding of oxygenation process within a hydrogel-based microfluidic device considering simultaneous mass transfer, medium flow, and cellular consumption. For this purpose, the role of geometrical and hydrodynamic properties was numerically investigated. The results are in good agreement with both numerical and experimental data in the literature. The obtained results reveal that increasing the microchannel height delays the oxygen depletion in the absence of media flow. We also observed that increasing the medium flow rate increases the oxygen concentration in the device; however, it leads to high maximum shear stress. A novel pulsatile medium flow injection pattern is introduced to reduce detrimental effect of the applied shear stress on the cells.
Highlights
In recent years, microfluidic technology has been meeting the need for a more realistic in vitro cell culture as a prerequisite for biological studies, drug testing, and tissue engineering (Fung et al 2009; Kashaninejad et al 2018; Nguyen et al 2017)
We numerically measured the effects of various control parameters on the transient oxygen concentration in a popular commercial microfluidic device containing a thin cell layer
We found that increasing the media channel height could prevent oxygen depletion in diffusion mass transfer
Summary
Microfluidic technology has been meeting the need for a more realistic in vitro cell culture as a prerequisite for biological studies, drug testing, and tissue engineering (Fung et al 2009; Kashaninejad et al 2018; Nguyen et al 2017). The development of various human-relevant cell culture platforms can address critical biological questions and decrease the need for animal research. The deployment of microfluidic technology has led to a low consumption of resources, resulting in low research costs (Zhang and Ozdemir 2009). Despite all these advantages, preparing a microfluidic device for cell culture has its own challenges (Munaz et al 2016). It is highly desired to improve oxygen delivery in microfluidic cell culture platforms
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