Zhang Yao, Yang Ning, Xie Liangliang, Shu Fangyu, Shi Qian, Shaheen Naila
School of Electrical and Information Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang 212013, China.
Faculty of Natural and Mathematics Science, King's College London, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, UK.
Micromachines (Basel). 2020 Dec 16;11(12):1118. doi: 10.3390/mi11121118.
In vitro models of the liver have a good simulation of the micro-liquid environment inside the human liver and the communication between cell tissues, which provides an important research tool for drug research and liver disease treatment. In this paper, we designed a 3D liver chip and real-time monitoring system based on microfluidic technology. The in vitro model of the liver on the chip was established by the three-dimensional microfluidic chip pipeline and the corresponding microwell array. Meanwhile, the culture medium is continuously injected on the chip, and the electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and near-infrared spectroscopy of the liver chip are recorded and analyzed from day one to day five. When the 3D cultured liver chip in vitro model reached a certain period and stabilized, paracetamol with varying gradients of concentration was applied to the cultured cells for drug resistance testing. The experimental results show that the liver chip and its monitoring system designed in this paper can maintain 100% cell viability of hepatocytes in vitro for a long time. Furthermore, it can meet the requirements of measurement technologies such as electrical impedance measurement and near-infrared spectroscopy in real-time, providing a stable culture platform for the further study of organ chips.
肝脏的体外模型能够很好地模拟人体肝脏内部的微流体环境以及细胞组织之间的通讯,这为药物研究和肝脏疾病治疗提供了重要的研究工具。在本文中,我们基于微流控技术设计了一种三维肝脏芯片及实时监测系统。芯片上的肝脏体外模型是通过三维微流控芯片管道及相应的微孔阵列建立的。同时,持续向芯片上注入培养基,并在第1天至第5天记录和分析肝脏芯片的电化学阻抗谱和近红外光谱。当体外三维培养的肝脏芯片模型达到一定时期并稳定后,将不同浓度梯度的对乙酰氨基酚应用于培养细胞进行耐药性测试。实验结果表明,本文设计的肝脏芯片及其监测系统能够长时间维持体外肝细胞100%的细胞活力。此外,它能够实时满足电阻抗测量和近红外光谱等测量技术的要求,为器官芯片的进一步研究提供了稳定的培养平台。