Optofluidic platform to investigate cell community behavior in microenvironments

An important aspect of cell biology is to study the effect of micro-environmental conditions on cell growth. This is usually achieved by culturing cells in macro bioreactors, followed by either cell growth quantification through measurement of optical density (OD) or imaging cells over a period of time using conventional microscopes to look at morphological characteristics of the cell. The presented work proposes an optofluidic platform to study nutrient responses in cell communities. A microfluidic cell culture device has been designed which generates nutrient gradients across multiple chambers where colonies of cells could be grown and maintained. The project further demonstrates a portable cellphone based microscopy platform to which the microfluidic device is augmented and the system acts as an integrated labon- chip platform for live cell imaging. The performance of the optofluidic platform has been evaluated by growing cells in the microfluidic chambers, characterizing nutrient mixing in the device and subsequent imaging of cells using the designed portable microscope.