Monitoring of cellular behavior to receive mechanical stimulation controlled by microdevice

This paper presents two types of microdevices for in-situ monitoring of cellular motion to controlled mechanical stimuli. One of the device can apply to the compression stimuli to cells by deformed diaphragm on the cell culture chamber. The other device permits stretching stimuli to cells by stretched cell culture chamber. These devices were produced by a three-dimensional micro structure fabrication process using multiple exposures to the photoresist. These devices permit the observation of cellular response motion to compression or stretching stimulation in real time because it is made of transparent materials. The cellular deformation and response behavior to mechanical stimuli on a fabricated microdevices was observed by optical microscope in real time. As a result, we succeeded in evaluation of the behavior of cell form and intracellular calcium concentration before and after mechanical stimuli using the fabricated devices.