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Updated: Aug 25, 2025
Parallel-plate Flow Chamber and Continuous Flow Circuit to Evaluate Endothelial Progenitor Cells under Laminar Flow Shear Stress
Published on: January 17, 2012
Perfusion culture of endothelial cells under shear stress on microporous membrane in a pressure-driven
Shinji Sugiura1, Kazumi Shin1, Toshiyuki Kanamori1
1Cellular and Molecular Biotechnology Research Institute, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Central 5th, 1-1-1, Higashi, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8565, Japan.
Abstract:
This paper reports perfusion culture of human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) on a microporous membrane in a pressure-driven microphysiological system (PD-MPS), which we developed previously as a multi-throughput perfusion culture platform. We designed fluidic culture unit with microporous membrane to culture HUVECs under fluidic shear stress and constructed a perfusion culture model in the PD-MPS platform. Four fluidic culture units were arranged in the microplate-sized device, which enables four-throughput assay for characterization of HUVECs under flow. Medium flow was generated above and below the membrane by sequential pneumatic pressure to apply physiological shear stress to HUVECs. HUVECs exhibited aligned morphology to the direction of the flow with shear stress of 11.5-17.7 dyn/cm2 under the flow condition, while they randomly aligned under static culture condition in a 6 well plate. We also observed 3.3- and 5.0-fold increase in the expression levels of the thrombomodulin and endothelial nitric oxide synthase mRNAs, respectively, under the flow condition in the PD-MPS compared to the static culture in 6 well plate. We also observed actin filament aligned to the direction of flow in HUVECs cultured under the flow condition.
