A contact line pinning based microfluidic device for modeling intramural and interstitial flows

Fluid flows critically regulate a number of important physiological processes in living systems such as vascular tissue development, immune cell and tumor cell trafficking. However, tools for creating well defined intramural (flow within a vascular tube) and interstitial (flow within a tissue) flows in a physiologically realistic, 3D setting are limited. We will present a contact line pinning based microfluidic platform that is able to create a spatially uniform interstitial flow within a cell embedded biomatrix (type I collagen); and an intramural flow within an engineered vascular tube lined with HUVECs. The created interstitial flow were characterized using a Fluorescence Recovery after Photobleaching (FRAP), to be in the range of 1.2 - 16 $\mu$m/s. The intramural flow was measured using a particle tracking method, to be in the range of 6 - 30 $\mu$m/s. We further demonstrate that interstitial fluid flows modulate breast tumor cell (MDA-MD-231) morphology heterogeneity and plasticity. We will also discuss the influence of fluid flow on cancer cell migration.