Culturing of neurons in microfluidic arrays

The ability to culture cells on microchips, containing arrays of micro-chambers, is becoming an important diagnostic tool to the biomedical researcher. In this work different neural cell types are cultured in microfluidic arrays made from glass and PDMS substrates.. The microfluidic arrays are made using photolithographically patterned two-layer SU-8 mold and transferred to the PDMS. This allows the creation of interconnected microchambers, which permit physically isolated cells to form axons in preferential directions. The culturing of several different neural cell types was performed using PC-12, P19 and primary culture neural cells. The viability of the cells and integration with microelectrode arrays was tested.