Mechanical Stimulation Pack

A versatile package for mechanical stimulation of cells

The Mechanical Stimulation Pack is designed to provide precise and accurate mechanical stimulation to your microfluidic experiments while using your own microfluidic chip. It allows you to create a wide range of mechanical stress and strain conditions on your microfluidic chip, enabling you to study cellular and molecular responses to mechanical forces.

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Main benefits

Easy
Simple connections
Flexible
Can be used with different kinds of mechanical stimulation microfluidic chips
Designed for cell biology
Contamination-free, sterile

Features of the Pack

Complete System

All fluidic components are included

Stability

Fluigent’s Push-Pull offers unprecedented performance in terms of stability and responsiveness

Versatility

This pack can be connected to any mechanical stimulation chip design to fit your needs.

Customization

We can adapt the pack to your custom mechanical stimulation microfluidic chip to fulfill your needs in terms of specific flow rates or pressures. The number of Push-Pull and Flow UNITs can be adapted to your experiments.

Related applications

Bidirectional Microfluidic Flow Sensor

FLOW UNIT | FLOW UNIT +

Microfluidic Push Pull controller

Regulate negative and positive pressure

Figure 1: Complete setup of the Mechanical Stimulation Pack

“The device is well-designed and allows for easy control of my microfluidic chips. What I like most is that you are independent of a computer and can directly control both positive and negative pressure.”

Christoph Trenzinger – Stratec

“The Fluigent LineUp series, including the new push-pull pump, enables precise and highly controlled aspiration and respiration of liquids. The setup allows us to further advance our research in both continuous flow and droplet microfluidics.”

Prof. Jeroen Lammertyn, KU Leuven Belgium – Biosensors group.

Testimonials

Applications of the Mechanical Stimulation Pack

At the tissue and body levels, mechanical cues play essential roles in various processes, including embryogenesis, tissue morphogenesis, vascular angiogenesis, tumor progression, and reproductive biology. They can be exerted in a continuous, temporary, cyclic, or pulsatile manner in the body.

Among the different mechanical cues, stretch and compression can be implemented by deforming PDMS membranes or hydrogel layers through application of positive or negative pressures with Fluigent’s Push-Pull flow controllers. Compressive forces can thus be exerted on 3D cell cultures to expose cells to compressive mechanical cues. Specific microfluidic chip designs combined with pressure controllers can be used as a platform for mechanical stimulation of 3D cell culture within hydrogel matrices.

Create sophisticated multi-modal stimulation patterns

As an example, custom-built microfluidic chips connected to Fluigent instruments enable homogeneous stretching (1), compressions (4), or more sophisticated stimulation patterns (2 and 3). (Paggi and al., 2020) Here, a PDMS membrane can be actuated by three independently pressurized chambers and a variety of programmable deflection patterns can be applied. As a result, various cell stimulation modalities can easily be created by tuning the pressure applied in the different chambers.

This platform was originally developed to reproduce mechanical stimulation of cartilage (Paggi et al., 2020, 2022). However, this is a highly versatile system of great interest for modeling other types of tissues which also experience complex mechanical actuation patterns in vivo.

Using a custom-built chip coupled to Fluigent Push-Pull pressure controllers provides excellent pressure control and an immediate switching time response.

Our mechanical stimulation pack offers a user-friendly and programmable interface and allows accurate application of a variety of mechanical forces on hydrogel-imbedded cells.

Specifications

PRODUCTS

Our Mechanical Stimulation Package contains the following :

LineUp Push-Pull Pressure and Vacuum controller (x3)

LineUp LINK Module (software control) (x1)

FLOW UNIT M (x1)

LineUp Flow EZ Pressure controller (x1)

P-CAP Series P-CAP series 15 mL (x2)

*Figure 2 : Complete Schematic of the Mechanical Stimulation Package*

FLUID HANDLING SYSTEM

Product	Part Number
LineUp Push-Pull Pressure and Vacuum controller	ELUPPU001
LineUp LINK Module (software control)	LU-LNK-0002
LineUp Flow EZ Pressure controller (x1)	LU-FEZ-1000

RESERVOIRS

Product	Part Number
2*15 mL Pcap with 15 mL Falcon tube	P-CAP15-HP

FLOW METERS

Product	Part Number
FLOW UNIT M	FLU-M-D

TUBING

Product	Part Number
Tubing and connection Kit Flow UNIT M	CTQ-KIT-LQ
2*Tubing and connection Kit P-CAP 15 mL FEP Tubing with an ID of 500 microns	CTQ-KIT-PC15

OxyGEN

Control in real-time, protocol automation, data record and export

ver. 2.2.0.0 or more recent

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Software Development Kit

Custom software application

ver. 22.2.0.0 or more recent

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Mechanical Stimulation Pack