Novel criteria for the optimum design of grooved microchannels based on cell shear protection and docking regulation: a
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Novel criteria for the optimum design of grooved microchannels based on cell shear protection and docking regulation: a lattice Boltzmann method study Iman Ramazani Sarbandi1 · Melika Sadat Taslimi1 · Vahid Bazargan1 Received: 27 May 2020 / Accepted: 5 October 2020 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract Grooved channel bioreactors have shown great applications in cell biology studies by creating a controlled cellular microenvironment and protecting it from destructive influences of fluidic shear stress. Despite numerous studies on improvement in cell docking and retention in microchannels, the lack of reliable criteria for determining optimal groove geometries seems to be a great barrier in the field. In this study, a systematic approach was used to find the critical geometrical parameters that yield to the highest cell shear protection against the upstream flow. To achieve this goal, the lattice Boltzmann method was used to simulate the flow inside a grooved microchannel due to its incredible reliability for portraying complex streamlines in microflow phenomenon. The simulation results showed that the flow behavior within microgrooves considerably varies with groove/channel geometry and that based on the generated microcirculation regions, there are correlations between groove/channel width, depth and the maximum shear protection factor, which led toward finding reliable criteria for optimization of such parameters. The results could be beneficial for researchers to design such devices based on different cell sizes, cell behavior and geometrical constraints while ensuring protected cell culture environment. Keywords Mechanobiology · Microfluidics · Cell culture · Bioreactor · Lattice Boltzmann method · Shear stress
1 Introduction In recent years, microfluidic devices have emerged in various fields due to their significant applications, specifically in providing the required cellular microenvironment in drug screening assays and biochemical synthesis [1–3]. Microfluidic has emerged as a rapid, high-throughput, automated and sensitive platform [4–6] for cell culture applications due to their capabilities in decreasing consumption of costly reagents and controlling factors such as shear stress and flow rate [7, 8]. The microfluidic environment provides more controllable cell immobilization and flows manipulation. Even cells with low adherence can be delivered and docked in microfluidic channels by merely
controlling the shear stress rate inside a microchannel using grooved substrates. Hence, they hold great applications in drug discovery chips, cell staining devices [9] and microbioreactors [10]. For cell immobilization, there are several approaches such as encapsulation within photo cross-linkable polymers [11], adhesion to patterned proteins [12] and protein coatings [13]. In addition to these methods, microgrooved substrates were vastly used to immobilize cells within microfluidic channels as they create shear protected regions. Manbachi et al. [14] used a single grooved substrate for cell immobilizati
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