A team of Canadian researchers has developed an automated platform for microfluidic cell culture to monitor the growth, survival and response to the hundreds of hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs, for its acronym in English) at the cellular level. The discovery is published Sunday, May 22, edition 'on line' in the journal 'Nature Methods'.
This new tool will allow scientists to study multiple variables in culture conditions simultaneously time and get new insights into the growth factors necessary for cell survival Hematopoietic stem.
According to the leader of this study, Véronique Lecault, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering University of British Columbia (UBC) in Canada, "the ability to perform massively parallel cultures of mammalian cells could provide new avenues for explore complex biological questions. "
"Our results will be used in many applications such as drug development, the selection of clones and optimization of crops," says Lecault.
The HSCs are found primarily in the bone cord and have an amazing ability to maintain a continuous production of specialized blood cells .
These cells have important clinical utility, especially for the treatment of cancer and blood-borne diseases. But the regulatory mechanism of stem cell division (self-renewal) or more mature cells (differentiation) is still not well understood.
The heterogeneous nature of the hematopoietic population complicates the study of HSCs, hiding the individual responses of mean measurements. The study of individual cells is therefore key to understanding these mechanisms. However, current techniques require hard work, expensive reagents and has limited flexibility to characterize the cells or changing the culture conditions.
The Canadian research team has designed and fabricated a microfluidic device - about the size of a matchbox - containing between 1,600 and 6,400 miniature culture chambers that can hold an important cell growth, together with sequential imaging system to control clones for several days while they develop from single cells.
Source: europapress.es
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