Hydrogel microfluidic co‐culture device for photothermal therapy and cancer migration

We developed the photo‐crosslinkable hydrogel microfluidic co‐culture device to study photothermal therapy and cancer cell migration. To culture MCF7 human breast carcinoma cells and metastatic U87MG human glioblastoma in the microfluidic device, we used 10 w/v% gelatin methacrylate (GelMA) hydrogels as a semi‐permeable physical barrier. We demonstrated the effect of gold nanorod on photothermal therapy of cancer cells in the microfluidic co‐culture device. Interestingly, we observed that metastatic U87MG human glioblastoma largely migrated toward vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)‐treated GelMA hydrogel‐embedding microchannels. The main advantage of this hydrogel microfluidic co‐culture device is to simultaneously analyze the physiological migration behaviors of two cancer cells with different physiochemical motilities and study gold nanorod‐mediated photothermal therapy effect. Therefore, this hydrogel microfluidic co‐culture device could be a potentially powerful tool for photothermal therapy and cancer cell migration applications.