The 24-Well Darcy Plate™ is a single-use, perfusion-enabled 3D culture plate which supports a variety of samples when used alongside Liquid Like Solids (LLS™) such as adherent and non-adherent cell types, explants, organoids, and microorganisms. This 24-well Darcy Plate™ is compartmentalized into quadrants, with each comprised of six 200 µL sample wells, a 6 mL liquid media reservoir, and a 12 mL effluent collection chamber. Supporting the LLS™ is a polycarbonate (PC) microporous membrane (2 µm standard, other sizes available) which allows liquid media and soluble factors to pass while maintaining support of the samples. Each Darcy Plate™ comes with 7 mL of LLS™.
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Darcy Plates™ are effective culture devices for longitudinal study of a host of sample archetypes as they employ LLS™ which mimics a capillary bed by providing interconnected fluid channels through the soft hydrogel particles. These channels allow for the perfusion flow while further creating spaces for cellular migration like that of immune cells, making the system ideal for in Vitro Immuno-Therapy Assays (iVITA™), one of Aurita’s platform technologies for personalized medicine. Additionally, by leveraging the porosity of the LLS™ bed and tuning the flow rate, the 24-well Darcy Plate™ supports high-density cell culture on the order of ten million cells per milliliter. Cells in 3D here remain proliferative, while cell-produced molecules are easily collected in the effluent chamber, making this system well suited for production of cell-based therapies or cell-produced biologics.
The four-quadrant design allows each 24-well Darcy Plate™ to be capable of running four distinct experimental conditions, as each quadrant is isolated from the others. Within each quadrant are six wells that are separate from each other but are fed by the same liquid media reservoir in which the wells are submerged. In this way, up to six replicates are possible in each quarter of the plate. Effluent pools below each of the quadrants in a chamber specific to those six wells and is able to be collected with a syringe or thin aspirating tip via the pressure actuation port. Looking down through the pressure actuation port when the bulb is disconnected reveals a cross pattern which indicates the collection point for each effluent chamber. In situ dosing of cells with perfusion is possible throughout an experiment by replacing the media in the feed reservoir with the media solution including the soluble factors to be administered to the cells and then continuing the perfusion. Cell exposure time is dictated by the perfusion flow rate, which is approximately constant when using the perfusion actuation membrane bulb. Fine control of perfusion flow rate is possible with the Perfusion Pump which is an electric pump system allowing for temporal control of the pressure gradient that drives this flow.
