Single cell trapping and cell–cell interaction monitoring of cardiomyocytes in a designed microfluidic chip

•Protocol in handling and usage of the designed mircrofluidic chip.•Single cell trapping of cardiomyocytes utilizing centrifugal microfluidics.•Cell growth, coupling, and beating of cells in less than one day of cell culture.•Coupling and decoupling dynamics in single cell level. Microfluidics technology has been exploited in single cell study because of its ability to manipulate particles and control over culture conditions. Two drawbacks of the existing studies are that (1) they require large supporting equipment like an incubator and a syringe pump; which involves more culture media volume, and that (2) the trapped cells are isolated from one another that cell interaction is obstructed or not considered. These limit the applications and advantages of microfluidics compared to conventional petri dish method. In this study, centrifugal microfluidics is utilized to trap single cells of primary cultures of neonatal rat cardiomyocyte with controlled separation distance. Cell growth, coupling, and beating are successfully observed and monitored in the fabricated microfluidic device without large supporting equipment. Coupling and decoupling dynamics, that is a first to be observed in cardiomyocyte cell microfluidics, can be proven useful in the headway of controlled cell growth and orientation research. Furthermore, these findings can be applied to future chip design and operation for cardiomyocyte studies and high-throughput lab on-a-chip devices.