Figure 1.

Device design and setup. (A) Design of the microfluidic device. Cells in fibrin are loaded into the brown chambers. Plain fibrin is loaded in the adjacent chambers to quantify cellular migration. Media is flown through the pink channels to feed the tissue. The flow patterns of the device are illustrated by the arrows. The two upper chambers will receive media with CaCO₃ nanoparticles (blue arrows), while the two lower chambers will receive plain media (red arrows). The central chamber is connected to a microfluidic pump to serve as a “waste” stream so the upper and lower chambers can maintain independence from each other. (B) Experimental setup of the microfluidic device. Pipette tips are used to feed the tissue chambers on the outside of the device, while the middle media channel is connected to a microfluidic pump via tubing. (C) Fluid velocity (µm s⁻¹) distributions are shown in the surface map (left). The streamlines of interstitial flow are illustrated with pink lines. Quantification of velocities along the black arrow are shown in the graph to the right. The boxed regions in the graph represent the fluid velocities within the tissue chambers. (D) FITC-dextran flow through the top media channel to show that the fluorescent signal is attenuated towards the lower chambers. This confirms that there is no crosstalk between the upper and lower chambers. Scale bar = 200 µm. (E) Visual confirmation of the presence of CaCO₃ nanoparticles. The black punctate marks in the tissue chamber and media lines serve as a visual representation that the CaCO₃ nanoparticles are reaching the tissue chamber through the media lines.