Microfluidic chip and cell culture

Advances in microfluidic technologies allow for the development of increasingly bio-mimetic systems for cell and tissue culture. In turn, this allows us to probe mechanisms of development in a more ‘natural’ state, and produce improved in vitro platforms as both fertility preservation systems or disease models. For the former, primordial follicles from large mammalian species, including the human are traditionally first cultured within ovarian tissue due to their small size, leading to challenges in nutrient availability at the center of the tissue section. We have evaluated the influence of a dynamic microfluidic culture system on domestic dog and cat ovarian tissue culture. There appears to be a species-specific effect, wherein flow maintained the percentages of viable primordial follicles in cat tissue compared to traditionally cultured controls, but not in the dog