The measurement of oxygen consumption of adherent cells is a profoundly important issue for estimating the bioenergetic health and metabolism activity of cells. The study describes the construction of a microfluidic chip consisting of an open container connected with a position-raised channel and dissolved oxygen (DO)-sensing gold ultramicroelectrodes for quantifying the oxygen consumption rate (OCR) of adherent cells. The microfluidic chip design can reduce the action of shear force on the adherent cells during medium replacement. The residual concentration of analytes in the open container was only 4.4% after solution replacement via the position-raised channel. The DO reduction current measured by ultramicroelectrodes averaged in the range of 40–60 s presented high reproducibility with a 1.1% relative standard deviation suitable for OCR calculation. After short-term (90 min) cultivation, the microfluidic chip can monitor the time-dependent change in the OCR of 3T3-L1 cells for several hours by repeatedly replacing the culture medium or with the stimulation of different mitochondrial inhibitors. The presented microfluidic cell-based chip has great promise for drug screening and chemosensitivity testing by measuring OCR to evaluate the mitochondrial function of adherent cells.

中文翻译：

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溶解氧传感芯片集成了与位置升高通道相连的开放容器，用于估计细胞线粒体活动

贴壁细胞耗氧量的测量对于估计细胞的生物能量健康和新陈代谢活动是一个非常重要的问题。该研究描述了一种微流控芯片的构建，该芯片由一个开放容器组成，该容器与一个位置升高的通道和溶解氧 (DO) 感应金超微电极相连，用于量化贴壁细胞的耗氧率 (OCR)。微流控芯片设计可以减少培养基更换过程中剪切力对贴壁细胞的作用。通过升位通道更换溶液后，开口容器中分析物的残留浓度仅为 4.4%。由超微电极测量的 DO 还原电流平均在 40-60 秒范围内表现出高重现性，为 1。适用于 OCR 计算的 1% 相对标准偏差。在短期（90 分钟）培养后，微流控芯片可以通过反复更换培养基或刺激不同的线粒体抑制剂，在数小时内监测 3T3-L1 细胞 OCR 的时间依赖性变化。所提出的基于微流控细胞的芯片通过测量 OCR 来评估贴壁细胞的线粒体功能，在药物筛选和化学敏感性测试方面具有很大的前景。