Rodríguez-Comas Júlia, Ramón-Azcón Javier
Biosensors for Bioengineering Group, Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC), The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (BIST), Baldiri i Reixac, 10-12, 08028 Barcelona, Spain.
ICREA-Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats, 08010 Barcelona, Spain.
In Vitro Model. 2021 Dec 2;1(1):41-57. doi: 10.1007/s44164-021-00005-6. eCollection 2022 Feb.
Diabetes mellitus is a significant public health problem worldwide. It encompasses a group of chronic disorders characterized by hyperglycemia, resulting from pancreatic islet dysfunction or as a consequence of insulin-producing β-cell death. Organ-on-a-chip platforms have emerged as technological systems combining cell biology, engineering, and biomaterial technological advances with microfluidics to recapitulate a specific organ's physiological or pathophysiological environment. These devices offer a novel model for the screening of pharmaceutical agents and to study a particular disease. In the field of diabetes, a variety of microfluidic devices have been introduced to recreate native islet microenvironments and to understand pancreatic β-cell kinetics in vitro. This kind of platforms has been shown fundamental for the study of the islet function and to assess the quality of these islets for subsequent in vivo transplantation. However, islet physiological systems are still limited compared to other organs and tissues, evidencing the difficulty to study this "organ" and the need for further technological advances. In this review, we summarize the current state of islet-on-a-chip platforms that have been developed so far. We recapitulate the most relevant studies involving pancreatic islets and microfluidics, focusing on the molecular and cellular-scale activities that underlie pancreatic β-cell function.
糖尿病是全球范围内一个重大的公共卫生问题。它包括一组以高血糖为特征的慢性疾病，其病因是胰岛功能障碍或胰岛素分泌β细胞死亡。芯片器官平台已成为一种技术系统，它将细胞生物学、工程学和生物材料技术进步与微流体技术相结合，以重现特定器官的生理或病理生理环境。这些装置为药物筛选和特定疾病的研究提供了一种新模型。在糖尿病领域，已经引入了各种微流体装置来重建天然胰岛微环境，并在体外了解胰腺β细胞动力学。这种平台已被证明对胰岛功能的研究以及评估这些胰岛用于后续体内移植的质量至关重要。然而，与其他器官和组织相比，胰岛生理系统仍然有限，这表明研究这个“器官”存在困难，需要进一步的技术进步。在这篇综述中，我们总结了迄今为止已开发的芯片胰岛平台的现状。我们概述了涉及胰岛和微流体的最相关研究，重点关注胰腺β细胞功能背后的分子和细胞水平活动。
