Abstract

Organ-on-a-Chip Technology as a Routine Tool in Drug Discovery and Development

Paul Vulto, Managing Director, MIMETAS

Organ-on-a-Chip technology is a new paradigm in drug testing. The technology has as its aim to raise the physiological relevance of traditional cell culture by combining this with microfluidic techniques. Organs-on-a-Chip are 3D tissues that capture the complexity of in vivo tissues including 3D morphology, extracellular matrix embedment, multiple cell types, vascular structure and perfusion flow.

In this presentation I will introduce culture and interrogation of complex 3D tissues, such as liver, kidney, gut and brain tissue. The tissues are grown on the OrganoPlate® platform, that allow culturing of over 40 tissues in parallel. The tissues are embedded in an extracellular matrix gel and comprise both stromal tissue, bloodvessel structures as well as epithelial barriers with clear apical and basal sides. The platform can be interrogated using automated imaging equipment as well as all standard equipment including fluorescence-based assays, immuno-histochemical staining, barrier integrity monitoring, transport studies, viability assays, qRT-PCR, ELISA’s and many others. Last but not least, operation of the platform is thus straightforward that an end-user who is not necessarily an expert in the field of microfluidics is able to perform the study. In this presentation I will show examples of Organ-on-a-Chip tissues for use in drug safety testing and disease modeling.