ABSTRACT
Corresponding to recent increase in need for innovative technologies in terms of tools for biological research and medical diagnosis, cell chips have attracted lots of attention of many researchers and pharmaceutical industry as new biochips following DNA chips, protein chips, and glyco chips (Singhvi et al. 1994; Ito et al. 1997; Ziauddin and Sabatini 2001; Anderson and van den Berg 2004; Suh et al. 2004; Hui and Bhatia 2007). A number of critical problems arising in the integration of bioassays on the basis of conventional cell-screening methods have been expected to be cleared feasibly by using the cells cultured in array on a chip in a cost-effective manner. However, unlike existing biochips to array molecules such as DNA, proteins, and sugar chains (Fodor et al. 1991; Chee et al. 1996; Kiessling and Cairo 2003), cell chips are made of living cells and need certain conditions to keep cells alive until the end of bioassays, imposing severe restriction in preparation, storage, and distribution of the cell chips. Therefore, compatibility to the on-site preparation is also considered in designing the construction and the operation of cell chips.
