Highly efficient microfluidic device for cell trapping and pairing towards cell-cell communication analysis

Understanding the mechanism of cell-cell communication is the key to unravel many physiological and pathological processes of multicellular organisms, but limited by lacking of highly efficient analytical approach, particularly at single cells resolution. In this work, we proposed a novel microfluidic-based method to achieve cell pairing for cell-cell communication investigation. Based on the only application of hydrodynamics, two types of cells were trapped by face-to-face heart-shaped micro-protrusions with high efficiency and single-cell accuracy. Oil-isolated micro-chambers were used to reduce cross-talk and spatial confinement on cells for long-term cell culture with high viability. The efficiency of 93% and 84% for single cells trapping and cells pairing were realized, respectively. To demonstrate the capability of the proposed platform for probing intercellular communication, the proliferation of cancer cell co-cultured with stromal cell was further discussed at single cells resolution. The result showed that the HUVEC could enhance the proliferation of HeLa cell. We believed that this microfluidic device as a flexible and reliable tool would have wide applications in the study of intercellular communication.