Microfluidic Device for Studying Controllable Hydrodynamic Flow Induced Cellular Responses

Hydrodynamic flow is an essential stimulus in many cellular functions, regulating many mechanical sensitive pathways and closely associating with human health status and diseases. The flow pattern of blood in vessels is the key factor in causing atherosclerosis. Hemodynamics has great effect on endothelial cells' gene expression and biological functions. There are various tools that can be used for studying flow-induced cellular responses but most of them are either bulky or lack precise controllability. We develop an integrated microfluidic device that can precisely generate different flow patterns to human endothelial cells cultured on-chip. We monitored cell morphology and used small-input RNA-seq technology to depict the transcriptome profiles of human umbilical vein endothelial cells under uni- or bidirectional flow. Such integrated and miniatured device has greatly facilitated our understanding of endothelial functions with shear stimulus, not only providing new data on the transcriptomic scale but also building the connection between cell phenotypic changes and expression alternations.