Patterned microwell arrays for single-cell analysis and drug screening

Nowadays, cells are commonly used for predicting whether the drug compounds will be effective and safe in human. The response of cell groups was usually analyzed, instead of single cell. However, individual cells within the same population even shows various characteristics. Understanding this heterogeneity is critical to studying how effective therapies will be in the clinic. Therefore, highly efficient analysis of single cell has become important for cellular biologists for both fundamental and drug screening. Recently, several methods including microscopy, laser capture microdissection, flow cytometry and microfluidic techniques have been developed for study the single cell. However, miniaturization, simplification and multifunction are still main challenges for the development of single cell analytical tool. In this paper, we have presented an easy-to-use and versatile method to fabricate various microwells for single cell analysis. Cells could grow into arbitrary shapes with constrained microwells. The microwells were able to be removed to investigate cell shapes effect on growth via our method. Furthermore, 3D multicellular spheroids which can be used for dug screening were formed based on micro-wells arrays.