查看文章

Here, we introduce a customized hanging insert fitting a six‐well plate to culture Caco‐2 cells on hydrogel membranes under flow conditions. The cells are cultured in the apical channel‐like chamber, which provides about 1.3 dyn/cm² shear, while the basolateral chamber is mixed when the device is rocked. The device was tested by investigating the functional impact of the initial seeding density in combination with flow applied at confluency. The low seeding density cultures grew in two dimensional (2D) irrespective of the flow. Flow and higher seeding density resulted in a mixture of three dimensional (3D) structures and 2D layers. Static culture and high cell seeding density resulted in 2D layers. The flow increased the height and ZO‐1 expression of cells in 2D layers, which correlated with an improved barrier function. Cultures with 3D structures had higher ZO‐1 expression than 2D cultures, but this did not …