Cell-Instructive Microgels with Tailor-Made Physicochemical Properties.

A microfluidic in vitro cell encapsulation platform to systematically test the effects of microenvironmental parameters on cell fate in 3D is developed. Multiple cell types including fibroblasts, embryonic stem cells, and cancer cells are incorporated in enzymatically cross-linked poly(ethylene glycol)-based microgels having defined and tunable mechanical and biochemical properties. Furthermore, different approaches to prevent cell "escape" from the microcapsules are explored and shown to substantially enhance the potential of this technology. Finally, coencapsulation of microgels within nondegradable gels allows cell viability, proliferation, and morphology to be studied in different microenvironmental conditions up to two weeks in culture.

Microfluidic synthesis of cell-type-specific artificial extracellular matrix hydrogels.

Droplet microfluidic technology is applied for the high-throughput synthesis via Michael-type addition of reactive, micrometer-sized poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) hydrogels ("microgels") with precisely controlled dimension and physicochemical properties. A versatile chemical scheme is used to modify the reactive PEG microgels with tethered biomolecules to tune their bioactive properties for the bioreactor culture and manipulation of various (stem) cell types.

High-throughput stem cell-based phenotypic screening through microniches.

As the field of tissue engineering develops, methods for screening combinations of signals for their effects on stem cell behavior are needed. We introduce a microgel-based screening platform for testing combinations of in situ-generated proteins on stem cell fate in ultrahigh-throughput. Compartmentalizing individual sets of growth factors was addressed by encapsulating aggregates of stable recombinant cell lines secreting individual glycoproteins into microgels through an on-chip polymerization. When these 'microniches' are cultured with a cell type of interest, fluorescence reporters indicate positive niches that perform the desired function, and the underlying producer cell lines of these selected microniches are analyzed by barcoded RNA sequencing. The microniche-based screening work-flow was validated via a model system based on engineered mammalian cells expressing yellow fluorescent protein (YFP) upon anti-inflammatory cytokine interleukin 4 (IL4)-based activation.

Stem cell niche engineering through droplet microfluidics.

Stem cells reside in complex niches in which their behaviour is tightly regulated by various biochemical and biophysical signals. In order to unveil some of the crucial stem cell-niche interactions and expedite the implementation of stem cells in clinical and pharmaceutical applications, in vitro methodologies are being developed to reconstruct key features of stem cell niches. Recently, droplet-based microfluidics has emerged as a promising strategy to build stem cell niche models in a miniaturized and highly precise fashion. This review highlights current advances in using droplet microfluidics in stem cell biology. We also discuss recent efforts in which microgel technology has been interfaced with high-throughput analyses to engender screening paradigms with an unparalleled potential for basic and applied biological studies.

Patterning of cell-instructive hydrogels by hydrodynamic flow focusing.

Microfluidic gradient systems offer a very precise means to probe the response of cells to graded biomolecular signals in vitro, for example to model how morphogen proteins affect cell fate during developmental processes. However, existing gradient makers are designed for non-physiological plastic or glass cell culture substrates that are often limited in maintaining the phenotype and function of difficult-to-culture mammalian cell types, such as stem cells. To address this bottleneck, we combine hydrogel engineering and microfluidics to generate tethered protein gradients on the surface of biomimetic poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) hydrogels. Here we used software-assisted hydrodynamic flow focusing for exposing and rapidly capturing tagged proteins to gels in a step-wise fashion, resulting in immobilized gradients of virtually any desired shape and composition. To render our strategy amenable for high-throughput screening of multifactorial artificial cellular microenvironments, a dedicated microfluidic chip was devised for parallelization and multiplexing, yielding arrays of orthogonally overlapping gradients of up to 4 × 4 proteins. To illustrate the power of the platform for stem cell biology, we assessed how gradients of tethered leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF) influence embryonic stem cell (ESC) behavior. ESC responded to LIF gradients in a binary manner, maintaining the pluripotency marker Rex1/Zfp42 and forming self-renewing colonies above a threshold concentration of 85 ng cm(-2). Our concept should be broadly applicable to probe how complex signaling microenvironments influence stem cell fate in culture.

Programmable microfluidic patterning of protein gradients on hydrogels.

Computer-controlled hydrodynamic flow focusing was utilized to generate tethered protein gradients of any user-defined shape on the surface of soft synthetic hydrogels.