Well-based microfluidic chip for monitoring non-contacting cell-to-cell interactions through microchannel

We present a new well-based microfluidic cell culture chip for monitoring non-contacting cell-to-cell interactions through micro-channels between chambers. The chip is fabricated with PDMS layers using SU-8 as molds. The fabricated chip was applied to monitor non-contacting cell-to-cell interaction between human glioblastoma cells and tau-engineered cells to study the association between malignant brain tumor and Alzheimer´s disease (AD). Our results clearly demonstrated that the secreted components from glioblastoma cells enhanced tau aggregation. We have successfully demonstrated that the proposed well-based cell-to-cell interaction-monitoring chip can make two different cells interact through micro-channels without contacting each other using interactions between tau-BiFC cells and glioblastoma cells.