Vascular endothelial cells adhere to each other and their physiological functions are expected to be modulated by intercellular forces. To elucidate the role of intercellular forces, cell manipulation techniques that can achieve precise control of intercellular forces are required, however, existing techniques do not allow for local manipulation of intercellular forces. Therefore, we have proposed a method for manipulating intercellular forces by driving cell-sized droplets containing magnetic beads with an external magnetic field. In this study, we confirmed the droplet size generated using a microfluidic device and measured driving forces of the magnetic bead-encapsulated droplets. As a result, we obtained droplets with diameter of 38.1±5.9 um. In addition, when magnetic beads were encapsulated while droplets were generated using the microfluidic device, the magnetic beads were encapsulated with a rate of 25.0%. By attracting the magnetic bead-encapsulated droplets with a 500 mT permanent magnet, driving forces of 0.04 nN were obtained. From the above results, although the driving force was weaker than the intercellular force estimated to be approximately 100 nN, this method can be realized by increasing the number of encapsulated magnetic beads and enhancing the magnetic field. In summary, this device semi-automatically generated droplets of a constant diameter containing magnetic beads and allows to provide external forces to cells.
Yoriki et al. (Wed,) studied this question.