On-chip Mammalian Cell Cultivation and Monitoring

The biological and medical progress is, among other factors, also enabled by powerful analysis devices. In the future, new tools will be based on microfluidics to assay mammalian cells. In this thesis, two concepts are discussed for the on-chip cultivation of adherent mammalian cells. Both concepts contain porous membranes to supply the cells with nutrients and gases by diffusion. The successful on-chip passaging is shown with MDCK- and HaCaT cells over 48 h and 14 days, respectively. The cell monitoring is limited to the measurement of oxygen uptake of cells which indicates their metabolism. The oxygen consumption rate is determined by measuring the decay of the oxygen concentration inside a closed microfluidic chip. With this system, the oxygen consumption rate of HaCaT cells is determined for different temperatures. The discussed concepts and results show that microfluidic devices are well suited for on-chip cell cultivation and monitoring despite their requirements.