Microfluidic device for applying a mechanical stimulus to a large number of cellular nuclei

This paper reports on development and improvement of a microfluidic device applying the mechanical stimulus to numerous cellular nuclei. Many researches have reported that the mechanical stimulus is important factor of cellular differentiation. But, It is not clearly understood what effects mechanical stimulus induce to cellular nuclei. Our purpose is to reveal the effect by gene assay. For this purpose, we develop a microfluidic device by which we can apply a mechanical stimulus to cellular nuclei. In improvement, we conduct effective modification to the device for getting more cells and succeed in collecting over 10⁵ cells. In experiment, we observe both deformation of cells and nuclei simultaneously and get preliminary result of gene expression about canceration.