4D-Printed Transformable Tube Array for High-Throughput 3D Cell Culture and Histology.

ABSTRACT: 3D cell cultures are rapidly emerging as a promising tool to model various human physiologies and pathologies by closely recapitulating key characteristics and functions of in vivo microenvironment. While high-throughput 3D culture is readily available using multi-well plates, assessing the internal microstructure of 3D cell cultures still remains extremely slow because of the manual, laborious, and time-consuming histological procedures. Here, a 4D-printed transformable tube array (TTA) using a shape-memory polymer that enables massively parallel histological analysis of 3D cultures is presented. The interconnected TTA can be programmed to be expanded by 3.6 times of its printed dimension to match the size of a multi-well plate, with the ability to restore its original dimension for trans

SUBMITTER: Yang C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7603422 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature