Abstract

Physiological Scaling and Computational Models for Microfluidics

Arti Ahluwalia, Associate Professor, University of Pisa

Several well-established studies on allometric scaling have affirmed that the metabolic rate of an organism increases following a three quarters power law as its mass increases. Conversely, the average metabolic rate per cell decreases following a quarter power law, which ties in well with recent investigations on in-vitro systems which suggest that per cell oxygen consumption rates decrease with construct size. I show, through analytical and computational models, that the average oxygen consumption rate per cell of a 3D spherical organoid decreases with an increase in size or cell density but decreases with the ambient oxygen levels. Thus physiological quarter power scaling of metabolic rate occurs within a limited range of construct dimensions and cell density. These trends are consistent with several reports in the literature and should be taken into account by the tissue engineering and regenerative medicine scientific community when engineering 3D tissue constructs for regenerative medicine applications as well as for the design of physiologically relevant in-vitro models.