To support the increasing translational use of transplanted cells, there is a need for high-throughput cell encapsulation technologies. Microfluidics is a particularly promising candidate technology to address this need, but conventional polydimethylsiloxane devices have encountered challenges that have limited their utility, including clogging, leaking, material swelling, high cost, and limited scalability. Here, we use a rapid prototyping approach incorporating patterned adhesive thin films to develop a reusable microfluidic device that can produce alginate hydrogel microbeads with high-throughput potential for microencapsulation applications. We show that beads formed in our device have high sphericity and monodispersity. We use the system to demonstrate effective cell encapsulation of mesenchymal stem cells and show that they can be maintained in culture for at least 28 days with no measurable reduction in viability. Our approach is highly scalable and will support diverse translational applications of microencapsulated cells.

中文翻译：

---

基于胶膜的藻酸盐水凝胶细胞封装微流控装置的设计。

为了支持移植细胞越来越多的翻译使用，需要高通量细胞包封技术。微流体技术是满足这一需求的特别有前途的候选技术，但是传统的聚二甲基硅氧烷设备遇到了限制其实用性的挑战，包括堵塞，泄漏，材料膨胀，高成本和有限的可扩展性。在这里，我们使用结合了图案化粘合剂薄膜的快速原型方法来开发可重复使用的微流体装置，该装置可产生具有高通量潜力的藻酸盐水凝胶微珠，可用于微囊化应用。我们表明，在我们的设备中形成的珠粒具有很高的球形度和单分散性。我们使用该系统演示了间充质干细胞的有效细胞包封，并显示它们可以在培养物中维持至少28天，而活力没有可测量的降低。我们的方法具有高度的可扩展性，将支持微囊化细胞的多种翻译应用。