Figure 3. Microfluidic synthesis of PEG-co-PLL microbeads and 3D culture of pancreatic β-cells.
(a) Typical optical microscope image of microfluidic generation of PEG-co-PLL droplets. Mineral oil and pre-gel aqueous solution were supplied from side channels and center channel, respectively. (b) Size distribution of the PEG-co-PLL microbeads with mean diameter of 21 ± 1 μm. (c) Polymerized PEG-co-PLL (with or without EphA/EphrinA modification) microbeads were dispersed in solubilized DCM. (d) The size of PEG-co-PLL microbeads in response to the change of flow rates of pre-gel solution. (e) Optical microscope image of pancreatic β-cells cultured with PEG-co-PLL microbeads with a ratio of cells to microbeads of 1:3. The number of cells in each well of a 48-well plate was 1.2 × 105/well. (f) The optical fluorescent image of β-cells with microbeads at day 2, which indicated good contact of cells with microbeads in a 3D manner. The cells were stained with calcein AM (green) and Ethidium homodimer-1 (red) for 30 minutes. The scale bars in a, c, e, and f are 100 μm.