Noncontact evaluation of the wetting characteristic of a cell sheet in culture medium

Regenerative medicine is getting popular all over the world. Especially, cell sheets for damaged corneal epithelium are expected to be commercially available in the near future. In cell culture procedure, the assessments of viability and tolerability of cell sheet are important. To date, the qualitative assessments have been performed by specialists without any quantitative evaluation. This study attempted to evaluate the wetting characteristic of cell sheet quantitatively and noninvasively as much as possible. There are three points to be considered; (1) cell sheet is susceptible to dry, (2) is free from a contamination, and (3) is thin with a thickness of less than 100 μm. Under these constraints, a non-contact evaluation system with both an air-jet application and an optical observation units was newly developed. This study found that there is a significant difference in the wetting characteristics of cell sheets in different culture conditions.