Fabrication of Microfluidic Cell Culture Platform for Real-time Monitoring of Lidocaine Concentration

We describe a microfluidic cell culture platform for real-time measurement of drug concentrations during cell cultivation. This is the first attempt to quantify drug concentrations during cell cultivation in real-time combining ultraviolet–visible (UV–Vis) spectroscopy with a microfluidic cell culture system in a single microfluidic chip. The microfluidic chip has two specific micro-chambers, one for spectroscopic measurements and the other for cell culture. NIH/3T3 fibroblast cells were seeded and cultured in the microfluidic chip, and then the local anesthetic lidocaine was applied and its concentration was monitored in real time. The test results showed that lidocaine negatively affected the cell growth. The lidocaine concentration was decreased due to its intake by cells for the first 3 h, after which an equilibrium concentration was reached. This is a simple but innovative method that can observe and analyze the correlation between cells and drugs in real time. The microfluidic system presented here can be a useful tool in various fields such as in cytotoxicity and drug screening studies.