Microfluidic synthesis of pure chitosan microfibers for bio-artificial liver chip

Abstract

We developed microfluidic-based pure chitosan microfibers (approximately 1 meter long, 70-150 microm diameter) for liver tissue engineering applications. Despite the potential of the chitosan for creating bio-artificial liver chips, its major limitation is the inability to fabricate pure chitosan-based microstructures with controlled shapes because of the mechanical weakness of the pure chitosan. Previous studies have shown that chitosan micro/nanofibers can be fabricated by using chemicals and electrospinning techniques. However, there is no paper regarding pure chitosan-based microfibers in a microfluidic device. This paper suggests a unique method to fabricate pure chitosan microfibers without any chemical additive. We also analyzed the chemical, mechanical, and diffusion properties of pure chitosan microfibers. Attenuated total reflection-Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectrometry and electron spectroscopy for chemical analysis (ESCA) were used to analyze the chemical composition of the synthesized chitosan microfibers. We measured the mechanical axial-force and diffusion coefficient in pure chitosan-based microfibers using fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP) techniques. Furthermore, to evaluate the capability of the microfibers for liver tissue formation, hepatoma HepG2 cells were seeded onto the chitosan microfibers. The functionality of these hepatic cells cultured on chitosan microfibers was analyzed by measuring albumin secretion and urea synthesis. Therefore, this pure chitosan-based microfiber chip could be a potentially useful method for liver tissue engineering applications.

Design and Fabrication of a Microfluidic Device for Synthesis of Chitosan Nanoparticles

“…Such as one of the linear biopolymers, chitosan, has become the center of attention for medical and pharmaceutical applications in recent years due to its high biocompatibility and biodegradability [1,2]. Chitosan is a hydrophilic macromolecule which can form biodegradable nanoparticles for site specific delivery of vaccines, genes, drugs and other biomolecules in human body [3].…”

Development of New Smart Materials and Spinning Systems Inspired by Natural Silks and Their Applications

“…We reported the first example of a microfluidic spinning process using a microfluidic chip that integrated a tapered glass capillary (Jeong et al, 2004). Diverse hydrogel-based solids and hollow fibers were fabricated using variations on these chip designs (Shin et al, 2007;Hwang et al, 2008Hwang et al, , 2009Lee et al, 2009Lee et al, , 2010). Stupp's group used a tapered pipet to prepare noodle-like strings in which peptide amphiphile nanofibers aligned and were bundled along the longitudinal direction of the string .…”

Microfluidic-Based Synthesis of Hydrogel Particles for Cell Microencapsulation and Cell-Based Drug Delivery

“…Both glass capillary and PDMS microfluidic devices have been developed to synthesize cell-containing hydrogel microfibers using natural hydrogels such as alginate [107], chitosan [108], chitosan-alginate [100], and synthetic hydrogels such as poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) [99] and polyurethane [109]. For example, HepG2 cells are encapsulated in chitosan microfibers produced by a glass capillary microfluidic device [100].…”