μOrgano: A Lego?-Like Plug & Play System for Modular Multi-Organ-Chips |
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| Authors: | Peter Loskill Sivan G Marcus Anurag Mathur Willie Mae Reese Kevin E Healy |
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| Institution: | 1 Department of Bioengineering, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, California, United States of America, ; 2 Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, California, United States of America, ; 3 California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3), University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, California, United States of America, ; Georgia Regents University, UNITED STATES, |
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| Abstract: | Human organ-on-a-chip systems for drug screening have evolved as feasible alternatives to animal models, which are unreliable, expensive, and at times erroneous. While chips featuring single organs can be of great use for both pharmaceutical testing and basic organ-level studies, the huge potential of the organ-on-a-chip technology is revealed by connecting multiple organs on one chip to create a single integrated system for sophisticated fundamental biological studies and devising therapies for disease. Furthermore, since most organ-on-a-chip systems require special protocols with organ-specific media for the differentiation and maturation of the tissues, multi-organ systems will need to be temporally customizable and flexible in terms of the time point of connection of the individual organ units. We present a customizable Lego®-like plug & play system, μOrgano, which enables initial individual culture of single organ-on-a-chip systems and subsequent connection to create integrated multi-organ microphysiological systems. As a proof of concept, the μOrgano system was used to connect multiple heart chips in series with excellent cell viability and spontaneously physiological beat rates. |
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