Studying the effects of mechanical stimulus on cells using multi-cellular compression device

Abstract

To investigate the effect of mechanical stimulus on cells, we developed a novel compression device, capable of multi-cellular stimulation. The device is a self-contained perfusion system, which consists of a cell incubator and an air chamber, separated by a PDMS membrane. The compression is accomplished by a micro-pole patterned PDMS membrane, using air pressure as the operating power. With the developed device, static and dynamic compression is possible using a pressure controller. By changing the size of PDMS poles, this device can be used to apply global and local compression stimulation. Using this noble device, we investigated biological responses in mechano-sensitive keratinocytes. Preliminary results indicate that this compression device is successfully designed to investigate cellular responses, particularly cell-cell communications. Here, we demonstrate the feasibility of this tool as to be utilized in evolving cell mechanics research.