Development of microfluidic tools for cancer single cell encapsulation and proliferation in microdroplets

Abstract

The role of microfluidics in liquid biopsy as a more capable solution to address the monitoring of cancer progression in patients is gaining increasing attention. One out of the several difficulties in can-cer monitoring resides with the offset between current cell growth techniques in vitro and the influence of the cellular microenvironment in proliferation. One application of microfluidics consists in the use of microdroplets to replicate the complex dynamic microenvironment that can accurately describe factual 3D models of cancer cell growth. The goal of this thesis was to develop a set of microfluidic-based tools that would enable the encapsulation, proliferation and monitoring of single cancer cells in micro-droplets. For this, a set of microfluidic devices made of PDMS for droplet generation and containment were developed by photo- and soft-lithography techniques, being tested and optimized to ensure single cancer cell encapsulation. After the optimization of the droplet generation parameters in terms of droplet size and long-term stability on-chip, the best performance conditions were selected for cell growth ex-periments. Different densities of MDA-MB-435S cancer cells were combined with various percentages of Matrigel®, an extracellular matrix supplement, to promote cell proliferation. As a result, it was possi-ble to monitor droplets with cancer cells for a range of 1-20 days. A preliminary observation showed signs of cell aggregation, indicating that the tools developed during the thesis have the potential of developing 3D cancer spheroids from cancer single cells.