Abstract

Engineering Inspired Biology: Cells as a System Component in a Microphysiological System

Berend van Meer, Chief Technology Officer, DEMCON Biovitronix and Researcher at LUMC

Organs-on-Chips and microphysiological systems (MPS) are highly complex devices to develop, not least because they require integration of many different modalities (e.g. material science, engineering, biology). Inherently, cell culture is highly variable and the solution to cope with this is typically to keep environmental features exactly the same since it is often unknown to what extend they are affecting the cell culture. This results in a requirement for highly reproducible devices to test biology, something which is difficult to realize for complex systems such as MPS – especially in research phases. While in this field engineering is mostly used to mimic physiological environments, we could aim to use engineering as a way to actively overcome the variability of biological components. Not by making just a reproducible static environment, but an adaptive environment.