Integrating in vitro organ-specific function with the microcirculation

Abstract

There is significant interest within the tissue engineering and pharmaceutical industries to create 3D microphysiological systems of human organ function. The interest stems from a growing concern that animal models and simple 2D culture systems cannot replicate essential features of human physiology that are critical to predict drug response, or simply to develop new therapeutic strategies to repair or replace damaged organs. Central to human organ function is a microcirculation that not only enhances the rate of nutrient and waste transport by convection, but also provides essential additional physiological functions that can be specific to each organ. This review highlights progress in the creation of in vitro functional microvessel networks, and emphasizes organ-specific functional and structural characteristics that should be considered in the future mimicry of four organ systems that are of primary interest: lung, brain, liver, and muscle (skeletal and cardiac).

Assessment of various traditional Chinese medicine formulas on skin micro-circulatory perfusion

“…According to the research of Yoshiya Ito [19], pre-pubertal, young adult, middle-aged mice micro-circulation decrease stepwise, but senescent mice perfusion reduced more significant, which means micro-circulation is in direct proportion to senility [20,21]. Micro-circulation has been progressively emphasized during the past twenty years in medical and drug research [18], but using the Laser Doppler Imager as a means to construct skin micro-circulation and skin senility relation in cosmetic area is the first attempt. Moreover, there is still a lot of unknown area to be explored.…”

“…Micro-circulation has high potential for dominating the nutritional substance industry by promoting energy metabolism, releasing bioactive substances within the skin, accelerating micro-circulation, increasing basal metabolic rates, and increasing nutritional substance transfers [14][15][16][17][18]. Thus, theoretically, skin health can be achieved by skin micro-circulation acceleration.…”

Challenges and Opportunities to Harnessing the (Hematopoietic) Stem Cell Niche

“…Microfluidic platforms have been increasingly used to make in vitro culture systems with more sophisticated control over spatial and temporal aspects of the culture microenvironments [103–105]. Several microfluidics-based approaches have been developed for HSCs, aiding with the incorporation of cellular and extracellular components and the administration of growth factors and cytokines to create a functional artificial stem cell niche [1].…”

Seeking the Right Context for Evaluating Nanomedicine: From Tissue Models in Petri Dishes to Microfluidic Organs-On-A-Chip

“…In such an integrated envi ronment neither organs nor their responses are isolated, meaning that the behavior of one organ upon treat ment of a substance (e.g., drug) will usually trigger a cascade of reactions of other organs that otherwise do not respond to the molecule by themselves alone. Therefore, in building realistic in vitro tissue models it is significant to implement a microfluidic platform where multiple bioreactors housing different organ models are introduced into the same context where the crosstalk among these organs take place, the socalled 'organsonachip' systems [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. Such models can be made across a range of complexity from either individ ual or multiple organ types.…”