Centrifuge-based cell encapsulation in hydrogel microbeads using sub-microliter sample solution

This paper describes a simple, rapid, and inexpensive method for cell encapsulation that uses a small amount (sub-microliter-scale) of cell-suspended pre-gel solution. This method requires only a glass capillary, an acrylic holder, and a tabletop centrifuge, and achieves cell encapsulation in calcium alginate microbeads using cell-suspended sub-microliter-volume pre-gel solution in 20 s. The method also ensures high cell encapsulation efficiency, with a sample loss of as low as several tens of nanoliters. Formation of calcium alginate hydrogel microbeads encapsulating Jurkat cells by the proposed method is experimentally demonstrated using 0.5 mu L of cell-suspended sodium alginate solution. Our proposed method is expected to be a promising approach for encapsulating rare and precious samples by non-specialists of microfluidics working in the fields of point-of-care and tailor-made medicine.