Cell culture techniques in microfluidic chips

Over the past decades, cell culture has played an essential role in the development of biology and medicine. As a model system, cell culture has had many applications for comprehending the cellular functions as well as mechanisms of disease production and progression in preclinical studies in various biological fields such as tissue engineering, genetic engineering, cancer research, vaccine production, and drug research. For the first time, in 1907, Ross G. Harrison et al. applied the in vitro cell culture method during a research on the origin of nerve fibers in a kind of frog. They successfully could cultivate the fibers in lymph fluid for several weeks. After that, the cell culture methods constantly have undergone changes and improvements over time for monitoring the function of different types of cells. Nowadays, cell provision sources for in vitro culture include primary cells, secondary cell lines, and more recently, personalized patient-tissue-derived cells.