Chip organ technology is gradually approaching intelligence

Release date: 2017-07-14

Organ technology on human chips has now reached a level of comfort that reflects the health, electrical activity and differentiation of cells without invasiveness.

The emergence of chip organs has made a very big change in scientific research. As a powerful tool, chip organs allow researchers to study the physiological conditions of human tissues and organs in an unprecedented way. By simulating normal blood flow, mechanical microenvironment, and how different tissues interact in living organs. They provide a more systematic approach to testing drugs than other in vitro methods and are ultimately expected to help replace animal testing.

In a matter of weeks, human cells grow on the chip into fully differentiated, functional tissues, such as the chip organs that mimic the lungs and intestines, and researchers are looking for ways to understand how drugs, toxins, and other interferences are. Change the structure and function of the organization. The team from the Weiss Institute, led by Don Ingber, is looking for a way to monitor the health and maturity of cells in those microfluidic devices for long periods of non-invasive monitoring. This is very different from measuring the electrical function of cells in the organ of the chip. For example, the brain cells of the brain or the cardiomyocytes of the heart, whether they are in the process of differentiation or responding to drugs, their electrical activities are very active.


Now, the Ingber team is working with the team of Kit Parker, a member of the Weiss Core Academy, to work together to find solutions to these problems. The transepithelial electrical resistance (TEER) can be accurately and continuously detected by organ chips with embedded electrodes. TEER is widely used to measure tissue health and differentiation, as well as to assess live cell electrical activity in real time, as in the cardiac chip model.

"These electrically active chip organs can help open a window that lets us understand how human cells and tissues function in the organ environment without having to enter the body or remove the cells from the chip," Ingber said. "We are now real-time. Study how different tissue barriers are damaged under infection, radiation, drug exposure, and malnutrition, and when and how they heal in response to reconstruction therapy."

TEER measurements are often used to quantify ion currents between electrodes or across tissue-tissue interfaces (composed of organ-specific epithelium or endothelium, the core component of many institutional human organ chips). The epithelial cells that form the tissue layer encompass the inner surface from our skin to many internal organs. Epithelial cells line up tight blood vessels and capillaries and support their function. These cell layers act as a barrier to small molecules and ions, protecting organs and supporting specialized functions, such as intestinal absorption or selective filtration of urine by the kidneys. Conversely, drug toxicity, infection, inflammation, and other noxious stimuli can destroy these barriers. TEER measurements are based on limitations on ion channels or electrical resistance and can therefore be used to assess the integrity of the basic functions of these cell layers, as well as the damage response triggered by drugs or other agents.

“Using a new layer-by-layer process, we developed a microfluidic environment in which the TEER measuring electrodes are part of the chip architecture and placed in tissue as close as possible to a single channel or parallel. Location, Dr. Olivier Henry, an engineer at Weiss College, said he has done a lot of work on chip design. “This fixed geometry allows for accurate measurements compared to past electrode designs, achieving comparability between experiments and experiments, and this tells us exactly how a channel-like tissue like the lungs or intestines is. Maintain morphology and how to disintegrate under the influence of drugs and other operations."

The TEER side organ chip design of the Weiss team was published on Lab on a chip. Kit Parker pointed out that "the future chip organ is the instrument chip: the idea is to free the experimenter from the data collection work. The continuous data collection and closure of the simulated organ is exactly what we need, allowing us to measure long-term experiments more effectively and safely. The drug in it."

The organ chip is more powerful and we have taken a big step forward.

Source: Health New Vision