3D material cytometry (3DMaC): a very high-replicate, high-throughput analytical method using microfabricated, shape-specific, cell-material niches.

ABSTRACT: Studying cell behavior within 3D material niches is key to understanding cell biology in health and diseases, and developing biomaterials for regenerative medicine applications. Current approaches to studying these cell-material niches have low throughput and can only analyze a few replicates per experiment resulting in reduced measurement assurance and analytical power. Here, we report 3D material cytometry (3DMaC), a novel high-throughput method based on microfabricated, shape-specific 3D cell-material niches and imaging cytometry. 3DMaC achieves rapid and highly multiplexed analyses of very high replicate numbers ("n" of 104-106) of 3D biomaterial constructs. 3DMaC overcomes current limitations of low "n", low-throughput, and "noisy" assays, to provide rapid and simultaneous analyses of potentially hundreds of parameters in 3D biomaterial cultures. The method is demonstrated here for a set of 85?000 events containing twelve distinct cell-biomaterial micro-niches along with robust, customized computational methods for high-throughput analytics with potentially unprecedented statistical power.

SUBMITTER: Parratt K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5577978 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature