Alginate hydrogel based 3-dimensional cell culture and chemical screening platform using digital microfluidics

We report the development of a microfluidic device that is the first of its kind to generate uniform arrays of individually addressable cell seeded calcium alginate gels for 3D cell culture using electrowetting on dielectric (EWOD) digital microfluidics (DMF). This is combined with EWOD DMF´s multiplexing abilities to demonstrate how a single device is capable of forming cell seeded alginate hydrogels, generating different concentrations of chemicals and delivering these generated chemical concentrations to different alginate gels to observe the effect of chemicals on 3D cultured cells. This lays the foundation for a more efficient and versatile 3D cell culture and chemical screening platform.