Chapter 3: Microfluidic Platforms for Biofabrication and 3D Tissue Modeling

The function of mammalian tissue relies greatly on the microscale tissue architecture into which specific types of cells are three-dimensionally arranged. To replicate these microscale tissue architectures and observe cell behaviors inside these architectures, techniques for handling, observing and stimulating the cells with microscale resolution are required; microfluidic technology—the technology that deals with the behavior, precise control, and manipulation of fluids that are geometrically constrained to a small scale—is one of the most promising candidate technologies for the fabrication and modeling of three-dimensional (3D) tissues with microscale architectures. In this book chapter, we report the recent progresses of biofabrication and 3D tissue modeling utilizing microfluidic platforms. We cover the applications of microfluidic platforms in the following two aspects: (1) microfluidic biofabrication platforms to fabricate microtissues such as cell-laden beads, cell-laden fibers and cell-laden sheets with high throughput and precise patterning of cells; (2) tissue-on-a-chip and organ-on-a-chip platforms to perform on-chip housing/installation, sensing and stimulation of tissues for 3D tissue modeling.