Pneumatically actuated spheroid culturing Lab-on-a-Chip for combinatorial analysis of embryonic body

We have developed conceptually novel Bio-MEMS chip named "PASCL” to break-though the combinational analysis of stem cell differentiation through embryonic body formation. PASCL has the ingenious mechanism for culture and manipulation of EBs by using pneumatically actuated microwells. Each microwell is composed of elastic thin membrane, and its shape can be modified from flat plane to concave microwell by applying pressure to the membrane. By using the active microwells, EBs can be collected from the array selectively and treated with reagents for differentiation inductions at a time. In this paper, spheroid formation and selective collection using PASCL was described for the first time.