Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Silchar, India.
Center for Sensors and Devices (SD), Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK), Trento, Italy.
Artif Organs. 2024 Dec;48(12):1404-1417. doi: 10.1111/aor.14834. Epub 2024 Jul 30.
The microfluidic-based Glomerulus-on-Chips (GoC) are mostly cell based, that is, 3D cell culture techniques are used to culture glomerular cells in order to mimic glomerular ultrafiltration. These chips require high maintenance to keep cell viability intact. There have been some approaches to build non-cell-based GoCs but many of these approaches have the drawback of membrane fouling. This article presents a structural design and simulation study of a dialysate free microfluidic channel for replicating the function of the human glomerular filtration barrier. The key advancement of the current work is addressing the fouling issue by combining a pre-filter to eliminate cellular components and performing filtration on the blood plasma.
The Laminar Flow Mixture Model in COMSOL Multiphysics 5.6 has been utilized to simulate the behavior of blood flow in the microchannels. The geometrical effect of microchannels on the separation of the filtrate was investigated. The velocity at the inlet of the microchannel and pore size of the filtration membrane are varied to see the change in outflow and filtration fraction.
The efficiency of the device is calculated in terms of the filtration fraction (FF%) formed. Simulation results show that the filtrate obtained is ~20% of the plasma flow rate in the channel, which resembles the glomerular filtration fraction.
Given that it is not dependent on the functionality of grown cells, the proposed device is anticipated to have a longer lifespan due to its non-cell-based design. The device's cost can be reduced by avoiding cell cultivation inside of it. It can be integrated as a glomerular functional unit with other units of kidney model to build a fully developed artificial kidney.
基于微流控的肾小球芯片（GoC）大多基于细胞，即使用 3D 细胞培养技术培养肾小球细胞，以模拟肾小球超滤。这些芯片需要高度维护以保持细胞活力完整。已经有一些构建非基于细胞的 GoC 的方法，但其中许多方法存在膜污染的缺点。本文提出了一种无透析液的微流道结构设计和模拟研究，用于复制人类肾小球滤过屏障的功能。当前工作的主要进展是通过组合预滤器来消除细胞成分，并对血浆进行过滤，从而解决污染问题。
在 COMSOL Multiphysics 5.6 中使用层流混合模型来模拟微通道中血液流动的行为。研究了微通道的几何形状对滤出物分离的影响。改变微通道入口处的速度和过滤膜的孔径，观察流出物和过滤分数的变化。
根据形成的过滤分数（FF%）计算装置的效率。模拟结果表明，在通道中获得的滤出物约为血浆流量的 20%，类似于肾小球过滤分数。
由于该设备不依赖于生长细胞的功能，因此由于其非基于细胞的设计，预计其寿命更长。通过避免在其中培养细胞，可以降低设备的成本。它可以与肾脏模型的其他单元集成作为肾小球功能单元，以构建完全开发的人工肾脏。
