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Simulation of Microcapsule Formation for Cell Encapsulation Application

Yaghoobi, Mohammad | 2018

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  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: Farsi
  3. Document No: 50510 (08)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Mechanical Engineering
  6. Advisor(s): Saeedi, Mohammad Saeed; Kazemzadeh Hanani, Siamak
  7. Abstract:
  8. Co-culture of different cells is necessary for cancer spheroid formation in preclinical drug tests. It is possible to produce thousands of micro-droplets containing different cells, i.e. microcapsules, in a short time, using droplet microfluidics. However the homogeneity of the cell numbers in the droplets has remained as an unsolved problem.Despite the large amount of experimental efforts to reduce the number of undesirable microcapsules, no one tried to utilize the ease of computer aided simulation for investigating different parameters. In this study, we develop a novel method for capturing cell encapsulation using CFD simulations. The effect of the cell suspension inhomogeneity and frequency of droplet formation on the cell pairing efficiency are considered. The formation of W/O microcapsules containing two distinct cell types coming from two separate channels is simulated. Sensitivity of the pairing efficiency to the deviation of the distance between the cells in the entrance channel is significantly high. It is shown numerically that doubling the standard deviation of the cell spacing, reduces the efficiency to less than the half, regardless of the method used for ordering the cells in the entrance channel. Using straight or spiral inertial focusing devices for changing the lateral cell equilibrium position does not affect encapsulation regime. On the other hand, decreasing the droplet generation rate from 5000 to 3280Hz in a less dense suspension with the same deviation of the distance between the cells, more efficient regime of co-encapsulation is achievable
  9. Keywords:
  10. Microcapsules ; Droplet Formation ; Microfluidic System ; Tissue Engineering ; Cell Pairing Efficiency ; Inertial Focusing Devices

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