Flow-Encoded Oxygen Control to Track the Time-Dependence of Molecular Changes Induced by Static or Cycling Hypoxia

Detecting the effects of low oxygen on cell function is often dependent on monitoring the expression of a number of hypoxia markers. The time dependence of the appearance and stability of these markers varies between cell lines. Assessing cellular marker dynamics is also critical to determining how quickly cells respond to transient changes in oxygen levels that occurs with cycling hypoxia. We fabricated a manifold designed to use flow-encoding to produce sequential changes in gas mixtures delivered to a permeable-bottom 96-well plate. We show how this manifold and plate design can be used to expose cells to either static or cycling hypoxic conditions for eight different time periods thereby facilitating the study of the time-response of cells to altered oxygen environments. Using this device, we monitored the time-dependence of molecular changes in human PANC-1 pancreatic carcinoma and Caco-2 colon adenocarcinoma cells exposed to increasing periods of static or cycling hypoxia. Using immunohistochemistry, both cell lines show detectable levels of the marker protein hypoxia-inducible factor-1α (HIF-1α) after 3 h of exposure to static hypoxia. Cycling hypoxia increased the expression level of HIF-1α compared to static hypoxia. Both static and cycling hypoxia also increased glucose uptake and aldehyde dehydrogenase activity. This new device offers a facile screening approach to determine the kinetics of cellular alterations under varying oxygen conditions.