Fluidic culture and analysis of pulmonary artery smooth muscle cells for the study of pulmonary hypertension

Abstract

There is an urgent need to develop novel in-vitro models to mimic the disease conditions in pulmonary hypertension (PH). We developed a microfluidic cell culture device for PH studies that withstood high shear stress. Techniques were also developed for cell recovery from the microchannel and mRNA isolation from the collected cells. Using this device, we found that shear stress caused a 7.5-fold increase in the transcription levels of a PH-related molecule, Cyclin D1.