Simplified prototyping of perfusable polystyrene microfluidics

Cell culture in microfluidic systems has primarily been conducted in devices comprised of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) or other elastomers. As polystyrene (PS) is the most characterized and commonly used substrate material for cell culture, microfluidic cell culture would ideally be conducted in PS-based microsystems that also enable tight control of perfusion and hydrodynamic conditions, which are especially important for culture of vascular cell types. Here, we report a simple method to prototype perfusable PS microfluidics for endothelial cell culture under flow that can be fabricated using standard lithography and wet laboratory equipment to enable stable perfusion at shear stresses up to 300 dyn/cm² and pumping pressures up to 26 kPa for at least 100 h. This technique can also be extended to fabricate perfusable hybrid PS-PDMS microfluidics of which one application is for increased efficiency of viral transduction in non-adherent suspension cells by leveraging the high surface area to volume ratio of microfluidics and adhesion molecules that are optimized for PS substrates. These biologically compatible microfluidic devices can be made more accessible to biological-based laboratories through the outsourcing of lithography to various available microfluidic foundries.