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Stencell

 

 

Designed by Vincent Studer, Pierre-Olivier Strale and Aurélien Pasturel 

"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."  

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Contact Vincent, Pierre-Olivier and Aurélien
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    STENCELL & EXAMPLES OF RESULTS

     APPLICATIONS

      TECHNOLOGY FEATURES

      HOW TO USE STENCELL

    USERS FEEDBACKS

      PUBLICATIONS

  STENCELL & EXAMPLES OF RESULTS

Stencell is a ready-to-use sticky foil with compartments that you can use for cellular confinement. It is designed to standardize the experiments and to minimize the consumption of reagents.

Stencell with colored solutions
Image credit: © Pierre-Olivier Strale
 
 
  COS-7 cells colonizing a gap induced by the removal of a PDMS stencil.
Images shot with a 20X objective during 18 hours (1 image every 2 min) with an inverted microscope.
Image credit: © Pierre-Olivier Strale
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Confined COS-7 cells stained for actin and nucleus. 
Image credit:  © Pierre-Olivier Strale
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  Confined COS-7 cells stained for actin and nucleus.
Image credit: © Pierre-Olivier Strale

  APPLICATIONS

Domains:

  • Cell-based assays

  • Live cell imaging

Techniques:

  • Wound-healing assay

  • Immuno-cyto-chemistry

  TECHNOLOGY FEATURES

Standardized, reproducible environment: Wound healing experiments are traditionaly done by scratching a confluent monolayer, leading to poor reproducibility and non-physiological starting conditions. Stencell guarantees a collective cell migration in standardized, reproducible environments.

Removable multiwell stickers: Stencells are thin sheets of silicone that stick tightly to glass and most plastics with no need for glue, meaning they can be removed later on. This, combined with their multiwell format, can create removable boundaries between cell populations or allow you to simply run more experiments per sample.

   HOW TO USE STENCELL

Storage conditions 

  • Storage at room-temperature, stable up to one year.

Protocol of use

  • 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, 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 and fully occupy the windows space.
    8)     Carrefully 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 12min, rinse 3X with PBS.
    9)  Carrefully 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.

 
 

  PUBLICATIONS

Pasturel A, Strale PO, Studer V. Tailoring Common Hydrogels into 3D Cell Culture Templates. Adv Healthc Mater. 2020 Sep;9(18):e2000519. doi:10.1002/adhm.202000519. Epub 2020 Aug 2. PMID: 32743980.

Strale PO, Azioune A, Bugnicourt G, Lecomte Y, Chahid M, Studer V. Multiprotein Printing by Light-Induced Molecular Adsorption. Adv Mater. 2016 Mar 9;28(10):2024-9. doi:10.1002/adma.201504154. Epub 2015 Dec 21. PMID: 26689426