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).

本研究旨在探究不同间质流（interstitial flow）与转化生长因子-β（Transforming Growth Factor-β, TGF-β）浓度，对包埋于以gelMA水凝胶（gelMA hydrogel）构建的3D微环境（3D microenvironment）中的肺癌细胞球状体（lung cancer spheroids）的CAGA-12-GFP与VIM-RFP荧光报告基因活性的影响。本实验在荧光显微镜下开展，将搭载肺癌细胞球状体的微流控芯片（microfluidic chip）放置于显微镜载物台，在细胞培养条件下进行70小时的连续成像。所有图像均导出为tif文件，随后通过ImageJ软件的"measure"工具，针对不同实验条件下的荧光活性变化（每5小时为一个采集间隔）对肺癌细胞球状体进行分析。文件夹"图2、图3与图4"包含用于荧光强度分析的各实验条件下的原始数据（tif图像），同时该文件夹内还附带了用于绘制对应图表的MATLAB代码。此外，本研究借助COMSOL软件对搭载gelMA水凝胶的微流控芯片进行仿真，以获取对应特定压降的水凝胶渗透率，进而计算间质流的流速与流量（相关文件扩展名为.mph）。