Design and Validation of a Microfluidic Chip with Micropillar Arrays for Three-dimensional Cell Culture

A microfluidic chip with micropillar arrays for three-dimensional cell culture was designed and validated. With the optimized chip, the mixture of cells and extracellular matrix mimics could be steadily injected into the cell culture chamber, the nutrients in the medium from lateral channels could quickly diffuse into the chamber, and the cell metabolites could also timely diffuse out of the chamber. To test the stability of the microenvironment constructed in the chip, neural stem cells were three-dimensionally cultured.