Data underlying the publication: Interstitial flow potentiates TGF-β/Smad-signaling in lung cancer spheroids in a 3D-microfluidic chip

The research objective is to determine the influence of varying interstitial flow and TGF-β concentration on the CAGA-12-GFP and VIM-RFP fluorescence reporter activity of lung cancer spheroids embedded in a 3D microenvironment composed of gelMA hydrogel in a microfluidic chip. The experiment was performed on a fluorescence microscope where the microfluidic chip with spheroids was placed and imaged for 70 hours under cell culture conditions. The images were extracted as tif files and the spheroids were analysed in ImageJ using the "measure" function for the increase in fluorescence activity (every 5 hr interval) for different conditions. Folders "Fig. 2, Fig.3 and Fig.4" consists of raw data (tif images) for each condition used to analyse the fluorescence intensity. These folders also consists of the MATLAB codes to plot the respective figures. Additionally, the microfluidic chip with gelMA hydrogel was simulated using COMSOL software to determine the hydrogel permeability corresponding to a specific pressure drop to calculate the interstitial flow rate/velocity (files with extension .mph).

研究目标是确定不同间质流及转化生长因子-β（TGF-β）浓度对嵌入微流控芯片中gelMA水凝胶构成的3D微环境内肺癌球状体的CAGA-12-GFP和VIM-RFP荧光报告基因活性的影响。实验在荧光显微镜上开展：将含球状体的微流控芯片置于显微镜下，在细胞培养条件下连续成像70小时。图像被提取为tif文件，随后借助ImageJ软件的"measure"功能分析不同条件下球状体荧光活性的增量（每5小时间隔一次）。文件夹"Fig.2、Fig.3及Fig.4"包含各实验条件下用于荧光强度分析的原始数据（tif图像），同时也存有绘制相应图表的MATLAB代码。此外，研究人员使用COMSOL软件对含gelMA水凝胶的微流控芯片进行模拟，以确定对应特定压降的水凝胶渗透率，进而计算间质流速/速度（相关文件扩展名为.mph）。