Improved passive cell distributing method to micro cellular diagnostic well array

We developed a novel cell injection method to the microwell array, which can distribute cells evenly to each microwell only by introducing cell suspension from the inlet. This method facilitates simultaneous cell injection into a number of diagnostic well with simple channel configuration. In order to enhance the uniformity of injected cell numbers in each microwell, we propose a new concept of the flow interchange, which can suppress deviation of the cell concentration in the cell loading channels. The uniformity of the injected fluorescent beads in each microwell was evaluated in prototype devices of 8 microwell array. It was confirmed that the cross interchange structure is effective to improve the uniformity compared to the previous microchannel. The coefficient of variation between the 8 microwells was 20.7%.