Princeton researchers have created a device that can herd groups of cells like sheep, precisely directing the cells’ movements by manipulating electric fields to mimic those found in the body during healing.
Princeton researchers have created a device that can herd groups of cells like sheep, precisely directing the cells’ movements by manipulating electric fields to mimic those found in the body during healing. The technique opens new possibilities for tissue engineering, including approaches to promote wound healing, repair blood vessels or sculpt tissues.
Scientists have long known that naturally occurring electrochemical signals within the body can influence the migration, growth and development of cells — a phenomenon known as electrotaxis. These behaviors are not nearly as well understood as chemotaxis, in which cells respond to chemical concentration differences. One barrier has been a lack of accessible tools to rigorously examine cells’ responses to electric fields.
The new system, assembled from inexpensive and readily available parts, enables researchers to manipulate and measure cultured cells’ movements in a reliable and repeatable way. In a paper published June 24 in Cell Systems, the Princeton team described the assembly and preliminary studies using the device, which they call SCHEEPDOG, for Spatiotemporal Cellular HErding with Electrochemical Potentials to Dynamically Orient Galvanotaxis. (Galvanotaxis is another term for electrotaxis.)
Previous systems for studying cells’ responses to electric fields have been “either bespoke and handmade, with issues of reproducibility, or requiring fabrication facilities that make them expensive and inaccessible to many labs,” said co-lead author Tom Zajdel, a postdoctoral research fellow in mechanical and aerospace engineering. “We wanted to use rapid prototyping methods to make a well-defined device that you could just clamp onto your petri dish.”
Read more at Princeton University
Image: This time-lapse movie shows a programmed circle maneuver in a layer of cells over eight hours. At left, a microscope image of the cells; center, their trajectories; right, changes in the electrical field’s direction. Video courtesy of the researchers; GIF by Neil Adelantar
