Abstract

Interfacing Structures and Functions for Organs-on-a-Chip

Yi-Chin Toh, Assistant Professor, National University of Singapore

Organs-on-a chip are being designed to culture cells in physiologically meaningful configurations within microfluidic devices with the aim of modeling human diseases and drug responses. A key challenge is to recapitulate multicellular structural organization of a tissue in order for cells to exhibit physiologically relevant functions. The use of microtechnologies enables us to probe how biochemical / mechanical cues arising from different multi-cellular structures that affect cell functions and phenotypes and to eventually implement them in organ-on-a-chip devices in scalable format. This talk will cover our experiences with engineering micro-structures to understand bile canaliculi formation in liver tissues and achieve alignment of cardiac tissues in microfluidic systems. We utilized a previously developed 3D microfluidic cell culture system and manipulated cell-cell interactions and cell-matrix interactions to alter tissue architecture and cell functions. Specifically, we demonstrated that imposing mechanical compaction forces can directly promote cell-cell adhesion to accelerate hepatocyte repolarization and bile canaliculi formation. The incorporation of topographical cues into microfluidics facilitated alignment of 3D myoblast.