Study of microfluidic cell chip for the toxicity test of artemisinin on Hep-G2 cells

Abstract

A novel microfluidic chip composed of a 6 × 6 array of cell culture microchambers was designed and fabricated in this article. The microchip analytical system combined with the designed microchip, measuring device and environmental control unit was established for cell culture and parallel drug cytotoxicity assay. Human hepatoma cell Hep-G2 and artemisinin were taken as the objective samples in the experiments. Hep-G2 cells were successfully cultured in the microchip for over 72 h. Moreover, the viability percentage of the Hep-G2 cells was higher than 90% with staining of trypan blue. The Hep-G2 cells were exposed to the artemisinin solutions at different concentrations (0, 10, 25, 50, 100 and 150 µmol L−1) for 12, 24 and 48 h. The viability of the Hep-G2 cells in chambers was measured by observing cellular morphology and detecting fluorescence intensity. Results showed that artemisinin could inhibit the viability of Hep-G2 cells, which depended on the dose of artemisinin and action time. The microchip analytical system could not only solve the shortcomings of conventional in vitro cell culture, such as labor intensive, reagent consuming and time consuming, but also improve great potential for the study of cell biology in the directions of miniaturization, automation, high efficiency and high sensitivity.