Investigating trophoblast invasion under hypoxic conditions using a simple PDMS-based platform

초록

In Pregnancy, trophoblast invasion/migration is a vital process for fetal development as well as mother’s health. Abnormal trophoblast invasion causes obstetric complications such as miscarriage, pre-eclampsia, and placenta abruption. Several platforms have been reported to understand the trophoblast invasion mechanism, but these systems have different limitations including difficult fabrication, non-physiological conditions and non-tunability. Therefore, in this study we suggested a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) based interdigitated platform to analyze the cell migration/invasion under different oxygen stress conditions [1]. Briefly, the interdigitated chip consists of two parts, each part seeded separately with human trophoblast cells (HTR-8/SVneo) and human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC) respectively. Subsequently both parts were joined together using an extracellular matrix (ECM) to analyze the cell migration/invasion. The trophoblast migration to HUVEC side was analyzed under hypoxic (0.5%) and normoxic (21%) condition through florescence microscopy. Moreover, the hypoxia generation on the chip was also verified by analyzing the hypoxia induced factor qalpha (HIF-1α) using western blot. Furthermore, matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) -2 and -9 were also analyzed using zymography under hypoxic and normoxic conditions. The results suggests that hypoxia upregulates the protein secretion which enhances the trophoblast invasion.