Fluxion Blog Go with the Flow: Shear Stress Enhances Physiological Relevance

In vivo, most cell types exist surrounded by moving fluid that influences their phenotype and function. The flow created from moving fluids creates shear stress,which can influence cytokine production, polarization, transcription factor expression, organization, and morphology of many cell types (Tzima, E., 2005, Shi, X., 2016, Chen, C., 2014). However, despite these facts, many biological investigations are conducted in vitro.Despite the convenience of in vitro cell cultures for modeling physiological processes, in vitro cultures are critically limited by the static nature of the culture system. This limitsthe translation of in vitro results to in vivo systems. Therefore, the ability to accurately mimic in vivo environments using physiological shear flow is critical to understanding the true biological responses of cells. Here, we highlight several flow-dependent biological processes that cannot easily be studied in traditional cell culture dishes, as well as a simple solution to investigate these cells under shear flow.