Abstract

Design and Operation of Pumpless Multi-Organ Microphysiological Devices

Mandy Esch, Project Leader, NIST

We have developed pumpless multi-organ cell culture systems that can be used to co-culture interconnected human tissues to probe inter-organ interactions and secondary drug toxicities. Short connections among organ-chambers and pumpless operation using gravity-driven flow enable us to reduce the amount of liquid typically needed to operate the microfluidic cell culture systems. The devices can be operated with near-physiological amounts of recirculating blood surrogate (cell culture medium). We demonstrate the systems with heart and liver tissues scaled at 1/75,000. Our approach allows us to reduce the dilution of recirculating drug metabolites that cause acute toxicity and long-term toxicity. Better predictions of drug toxicity and efficacy with in vitro systems are needed, since clinical trials with humans often do not reproduce the results seen with animal models.