4. Conclusion
In this study, we report an advanced and biomimetic microfluidic
platform making use of an enzymatically crosslinked eSF hydrogel, by
combining photolithography and soft lithography. Functional devices were
obtained in amorphous conformation with unique characteristics, such as
good malleability, high transparency and flexibility. The silk fibroin
concentration that presented the best characteristics was 14 wt%,
proving that it retains the intricate serpentine features with high
level of fidelity. Next, the platform showed a good ability to mimic
characteristic features of the native tumor microenvironment, displaying
a friendly microenvironment for cells functions as demonstrated by the
measured cell viability and metabolic activity. The perfusion of
gemcitabine affected cell viability and demonstrated the utility of the
developed cell-laden enzymatic-crosslinked silk protein fibroin
microfluidic chip to be utilized as a drug screening platform.
Importantly, the improvement of soft microfluidics such as the one
developed herein present some important features over the hard
microfluidics (PDMS), e.g. physiological relevance, functional
space, flexibility, ECM interaction analysis, optical properties and
easy manipulation. Overall, the developed soft cell-laden
enzymatic-crosslinked silk fibroin hydrogel based microfluidic device
may be used in tissue engineering applications, organ or tissue/tumor
models, drug discovery/screening, a tissue implant, tissue regeneration
or, more interestingly, as implantable and biocompatible microdevices.