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Assay of glioma cell responses to an anticancer drug in a cell-based microfluidic device

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Abstract

Despite progress in research and treatment, the prognosis for patients with gliomas remains relatively dismal. As such, develop a new in vitro model is fast becoming a necessary step in efforts to improve research on malignant gliomas. Microfluidics, a potentially effective tool, has been increasingly applied in neuroscience and oncology studies. However, gliomas, the most common primary brain tumours, have not yet been treated with this application. In the current study, we developed a glioma-related research method using microfluidics. After successfully culturing rat C6 glioma cells for up to 7 days in a microfluidic device, we monitored cellular responses to the anticancer drug, colchicines, after which we analysed cell viability using propidium iodide (PI) staining. We recorded temporal changes in cell morphology at various concentrations of colchicine using an inverted microscope. Results show that the number of injured/dead cancer cells and morphological changes increased relative to the drug’s concentration and treatment frequency. These findings will be helpful in developing microfluidic device applications for future research on brain tumour therapy (for malignant gliomas and other types of tumours), for conducting cytotoxicity research in a biomimetic microenvironment, for developing glioma-related anticancer drugs, and for developing glial cell-based biosensors for glioma detection.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are very grateful to Dr. Wenhao Yu at the Department of Pathology, Harvard Medical School, and Dr. Jing Zhou at the Department of Genetics and Genomics, School of Medicine, Boston University, for their helpful discussion. The authors would also like to acknowledge funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 209 750 82; No. 207 750 59), the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China (NCET-08-0464), the State Forestry Administration of the People’s Republic of China (No. 200904004), the Scientific Research Foundation for the Returned Overseas Chinese Scholars, State Education Ministry, and the Northwest A&F University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Veterinary Medicine, Northwest A&F University, 712100, Yangling, Shaanxi, People’s Republic of China

    Wenming Liu, Li Li & Jinyi Wang

  2. College of Science, Northwest A&F University, 712100, Yangling, Shaanxi, People’s Republic of China

    Peng Sun, Jinfeng Wang & Jinyi Wang

  3. College of Life Science, Northwest A&F University, 712100, Yangling, Shaanxi, People’s Republic of China

    Linyan Yang

  4. Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Molecular Biology for Agriculture, Northwest A&F University, 712100, Yangling, Shaanxi, People’s Republic of China

    Jinyi Wang

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  1. Wenming Liu
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Correspondence to Jinyi Wang.

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Liu, W., Sun, P., Yang, L. et al. Assay of glioma cell responses to an anticancer drug in a cell-based microfluidic device. Microfluid Nanofluid 9, 717–725 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10404-010-0584-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10404-010-0584-5

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