November 15, 2013 – After a seven year process with the USPTO, a patent has been awarded for our controlled flow microfluidic cell culture device (the MicroSlide). This cell culture card was developed for the NASA Astrobionics program in 2004-2005. The unique advantages of this microfluidic cell culture card are: 1) a single inlet channel feeds each of the cell culture chambers at the same rate; 2) sterile isolation of the contents of each chamber.

The principle of the MicroSlide’s unique flow control relies on the placement of macroporous membranes as the inlet and outlet of each fluid chamber. The membrane area, porosity, and thickness contribute to the resistance of fluid flow into and out of each chamber. As a result only a single inlet channel and outlet channel are required to maintain equivalent flow across each cell culture chamber.

Contact us to learn more how this product can be used for your cell culture experiments.

The NASA Astrobionics program’s mission is to conduct biological experiments in near earth orbit on autonomous satellites engineered to grow and maintain living cell cultures. The goal is to study the effect of weightlessness and radiation on growing cells. The stringent requirements for compact size, low power consumption, and ruggedness resulted in the successful launch an automated satellite system the size of a loaf of bread (nano satellite) that had ALine’s controlled flow microfluidic cell culture card in the heart of the system.

To learn more about the cell culture card’s flight into near earth orbit, see our case studies. Or visit our technical articles page to read the publication.