Overview
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Stencell are ready-to-use silicon chambers that you can stick and remove for cellular confinement or dynamic assays, such as migration or wound-healing.
Stencell was designed to standardize your experiments and minimize the consumption of reagents.
It is very helpful when you are working with super expensive reagents or very rare cell lines, and when you want to test various experimental hypothesis.
Designed by
Vincent Studer
,
Pierre-Olivier Strale
and
Aurélien Pasturel
They were hosted by the Cell Organ-izers joint research laboratory (CNRS-Alvéole).
Powered by
the Stencil technology published in
Advanced Healthcare Materials
The shapes
No limit! Choose one of the 5 ready-to-use designs: Solo - Quartet - Nonet - Presto - Allegro.
You can also freely stack them.


Feedback from the Test Program
Images
Wound-healing
Images shot with a 20X objective during 18 hours (1 image every 2 min) with an inverted microscope.
Image credit: © Pierre-Olivier Strale
Features

Stack and play
Compose flow channels and chambers, stacking different designs

Stick it to a variety of culture labware
-
Glass slides
-
Plastic dishes
-
Transwell(R) inserts
-
Polyacrylamide gels

Remove it
Stencell is not glued. It can then be removed to:
-
Trigger cell migration
-
Switch from flow chamber to open window
Very useful for wound healing experiments

It is compatible with imaging
These thin sheets of silicone are fully transparent, without autofluorescence

Parallelized and standardized experiments
One multiwell Stencell can perform several experimental conditions

It saves samples and reagents
A few microliters only are required
Protocol
Wound-healing experiment in Stencell chambers
1) Using tweezers, discard the windows of a Stencell
2) Using tweezers, grab the Stencell and place it on your dedicated cell culture substrate (glass coverslip, plastic Petri dish, multiwell plate)
3) Optional: use a flat surface to make sure the Stencell properly stick to the cell culture substrate.
4) Immerse the sample in complete cell culture medium and place it in an incubator (37 °C, 5 % CO2).
5) Detach your cells according to your standard procedure, centrifuge.
6) Remove the bubbles present at the interface Stencell/cell cuture substrate using a pipette.
7) Seed the cells and place the sample back in the incubator until cells are spread and fully occupy the windows space.
8) Carefully remove the Stencell using tweezers while maintaining one corner with a pipette.
9) Optional: Place the glass coverslip on its dedicated holder.
10) Image with a microscope at 37 °C, 5 % CO2.
lmmunostaining of cells confined in Stencell chambers
1) Using tweezers, discard the windows of your Stencell
2) Using tweezers, grab the Stencell and place it on your dedicated cell culture substrate (glass slide, plastic Petri dish, multiwells plate)
3) Optional : use a flat surface to make sure the Stencell properly stick to the cell culture substrate
4) Immerse the sample in complete cell culture medium and place it in an incubator (37 °C, 5 % CO2)
5) Detach your cells according to your standard procedure, centrifuge.
6) Remove the bubbles present at the interface Stencell/cell cuture substrate using a pipette.
7) Seed the cells and place the sample back in the incubator until cells are spread.
8) Fix with PFA 4 % for 12 min, rinse 3 times with PBS.
9) Carefully remove the Stencell using tweezers while maintaining one corner with a pipette.
10) Stain the cells with standard procedures.
11) Optional: mount the glass coverslip on a glass slide.
12) Image on a fluorescence microscope.
Key conditions of success
- When you remove the inner elements of your Stencell, use 2 tweezers: 1 to remove and the other 1 to press close to the junction in order to avoid breaking the Stencell. Alternatively, you can cut the junctions with a scalpel.
- When you put the Stencell on top of your culture substrate, softly remove the bubbles and stick the Stencell, patting it with tweezers
- Depending on the substrate hydrophobicity, the droplet might not completely fill the well. You can:
* Either fill the well with the standard volume. Then, help the droplets stick to the Stencell by connecting the liquid next to the Stencell walls using the pipette tip.
* Or, you may add an excess volume of liquid (e.g. 30 μL) and remove it afterwards (e.g. 10 μL). - But: do not overfill (e.g. > 30 μL) the wells, otherwise two droplets may merge.
- When you put your substrate and cells in the incubator. Wait for 1 to 2 hours until cells spread and fully occupy the windows space. If you need to wait longer, be sure that the droplets do not completely evaporate
Storage conditions
-
The Stencells are packaged between 2 protective foils: if you wish to store them, keep them between these foils, in order to avoid dust deposition.
-
Storage at room-temperature, stable up to 2 years.
Technical information

Kit description
Each kit of Stencell contains:
- 2 sheets of 50 Stencells each
- Either the same design for the 100 Stencells, or 2 different designs (one design per sheet).
Resources
- The datasheet for more technical details
- The most Frequently Asked Questions
5 Designs
- Solo: 1 circular well - Diam. 12 mm
- Quartet: 4 circular wells - Diam. 3 mm
- Nonet: 9 circular wells - Diam. 3 mm
- Presto: 2 oblong wells spaced by 0.35 mm
- Allegro: 2 oblong wells spaced by 0.62 mm
Each sheet is composed of 50 identical Stencells.
Upon receipt of your purchase order, you will choose either the same design for your 2 sheets, or 2 different designs for your 2 sheets (1 per sheet of 50).
Story
"While developing an innovative micropatterning technology on glass coverslips, we had to optimize our protocole and thus screen a lot of conditions with expensive reagents. We could have used glass-bottom 96wp but we found them expensive and inconvenient for reproducible surface treatment. We thus started to develop our own low-volume fluid handling method. We quickly discovered that hydrophobic perforated PDMS films could act as reversible boundaries for liquids. With simple craft cutting robot, we were able to fabricate on-demand stencils of any shape and size. By filling those stencils with microliters droplets, we end up with a very versatile and reproducible high-throughput fluid handling solution."
Contact
the team about their technology
.
Esther Graudens
New projects at Idylle
"Sometimes research needs a high level of versatility. This is exactly what appealed me when I met Vincent, Pierre-Olivier and Aurelien. They were hosted by the Cell Organ-izers joint research laboratory, set up by CNRS and our sister company
Alveole
. So they naturally turned to us when they decided to look for a partner to release their stencils. We knew that Stencell would be so useful to a lot of researchers who could save reagents and cells while testing new ideas and experimental conditions on small volumes. So we said yes immediately. On top of that, the three of them have proven to be highly reactive and proactive, engaged and enthusiastic. They love as much as we do testing new ideas and suggest others. It was a great pleasure to go through our industrial process together!"
Combining Stencell
You may also like to combine Stencell with these R&D products

BrightER
Combine Stencell together with BrightER to make live imaging of ER localization/remodeling in cell migration.

AgarSqueezer
Combine Stencell Solo with AgarSqueezer to multiply your experimental conditions & increase the percentage of cells under compression. Or use the Allegro / Presto shapes to make live imaging of cell migration in confined environments.

Everspark
Combine Stencell together with Everspark to help during the sealing step when mounting your sample.