Microfluidic device to study flow-free chemotaxis of swimming cells
Nicolas Garcia‐Seyda, Laurène Aoun, Victoria Tishkova, Valentine Seveau de Noray, Martine Biarnes‐Pelicot, Marc Bajénoff, Marie‐Pierre Valignat, Olivier Théodoly
Abstract
Microfluidic devices have been used in the last two decades to study in vitro cell chemotaxis, but few existing devices generate gradients in flow-free conditions. Flow can bias cell directionality of adherent cells and precludes the study of swimming cells like naïve T lymphocytes, which only migrate in a non-adherent fashion. We developed two devices that create stable, flow-free, diffusion-based gradients and are adapted for adherent and swimming cells. The flow-free environment is achieved by using agarose gel barriers between a central channel with cells and side channels with chemoattractants. These barriers insulate cells from injection/rinsing cycles of chemoattractants, they dampen residual drift across the device, and they allow co-culture of cells without physical interaction, to study contactless paracrine communication. Our devices were used here to investigate neutrophil and naïve T lymphocyte chemotaxis.