Cell migration is essential for both physiological and pathological processes, including would healing, inflammation, and cancer invasion and metastasis. The high-throughput screening of the genes responsible for cell migration is therefore desired for the elucidation of the mechanisms underlying their processes.

　In this study, we fabricated a microdevice for cell migration assays using reverse-transfection. Reverse-transefection is a microarray?driven gene infection system and can be used to investigate roles of many genes on a single slide. However, a trade off relationship between density and distance has been a practical issue. To solve this problem, we fabricated a microdevice that confines individual reverse-transfection spots in nano-liter scale chambers and avoid cross-contamination between the spots. Further, we examined cell migration speed with this device and demonstrated that this device can be used to find out genes responsible for cell migration.

Fig. 1 Microdevice for cell migration assay using reverse transfection.