Microbioreactor for cell cultures under uniaxial cyclic strain

In the last decade, the idea of mimicking in vivo physico-chemical stimuli into in vitro cell cultures paved the way to the development of advanced cell culture systems. Microfabrication allows the development of micron-scale biocompatible culture system with the addition of technical features including physical and chemical cues. We here describe the development and validation of a microbioreactor for uniaxial mechanical strain of cells monolayers. A thin membrane is stretched by application of vacuum inside two lateral chambers. We explored different fabrication solutions in order to obtain higher or lower ranges of strain. We finally employed the microdevice to investigate the response of human primary cardiac fibroblasts to different strain field intensities in terms of cell morphology and orientation.