Engineering Science and Materials Commons^™

A Nanofiber-Embedded Microfluidic Platform For Studying Neurobiology, Donghee Lee, Navatha Shree Sharma, S. M. Shatil Shahriar, Kai Yang, Zheng Yan, Jingwei Xie

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Faculty Publications

Due to their biomimetic properties, electrospun nanofibers have been widely used in neurobiology studies. However, mechanistic understanding of cell-nanofiber interactions is challenging based on the current in vitro culture systems due to the lack of control of spatiotemporal patterning of cells and difficulty in monitoring single cell behavior. To overcome these issues, we apply microfluidic technology in combination with electrospun nanofibers for in vitro studies of interactions between neurons and nanofiber materials. We demonstrate a unique nanofiber embedded microfluidic device which contains patterned aligned or random electrospun nanofibers as a new culture system. With this device, we test how different …