Behavior of HepG2/C3A cell cultures in a microfluidic bioreactor

▶ New models avoiding labor intensive methods are under development for drug screening, pharmacological discovery and toxicology assessment. ▶ Microfluidic bioreactors have the advantage of including a whole new set of technologies. ▶ However, there is lack of parametrical studies and systematic analysis of the cell behavior in such new environment. ▶ The research highlight of our study is to give a parametric investigation of the inoculated cell density, the perfusion flow rate on the hepG2/C3a behavior cultivated in a microfluidic bioreactors. ▶ We also compared the parameters with a first type of well-known chemical used in the toxicity benchmark. ▶ The HepG2/C3a cells are also one of the references in the toxicity analysis concerning liver cells. ▶ The main interest of the paper is thus to provide a view of the sensitivity of the cell culture in bioreactor when compared to a flat Petri culture control.