Translating advances in organ‐on‐a‐chip technology for supporting organs

Abstract

Organ-on-a-chip platforms have recently seen tremendous progress. They have found potential applications in the study of physiology and pathology of tissues, drug toxicity, and development of tissue models for replacement of animal studies. However, their potential role in organ transplantation has hardly been discussed, so far. Organ transplantation represents a major medical advancement of the twenty-first century, yet it suffers from limitation due to the shortage of organ supply. Very often, organs harvested from donor's body are deemed non-usable because of being damaged or "marginal". Recently, developments of bioartificial devices such as artificial placenta and renal assist-devices have shown that it is possible to develop novel bioartificial organ support systems that can support the healing of damaged or marginal organs prior to their transplantation.In the current article, we introduce a novel concept for building bioartificial organ assist devices and systems by integrating arrays of numerous organ-on-a-chip platforms. The new system can be used in organ repair centers as means for temporary organ support and functional enhancement. We have also briefly reviewed the relevant organ-on-a-chip platforms developed so far, and related literature to form a basis for developing our new concept, device and its application. The proposed system may help to increase the number of organs available for transplantation and improve transplantation outcomes.

An Alkaline Based Method for Generating Crystalline, Strong, and Shape Memory Polyvinyl Alcohol Biomaterials

“…Other applications that can benefit from employing our strong and biocompatible materials include developing functional organ‐on‐a‐chip devices that can be used as alternative disease models and drug testing platforms [ 41 ] or implantable microfluidic devices. [ 42 ] Considering that only limited number of materials are being used in designing microfluidic devices, such as polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), which is associated with the problem of absorption of hydrophobic drugs, [ 43 ] and polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA), which is rigid, strong hydrogels with stretchability, low water content, and high transparency can change the trajectory of progress in this field.…”

Collagen immobilization on ultra-thin nanofiber membrane to promote in vitro endothelial monolayer formation

“…Tissue engineering has been reported to be useful for regenerative medicine 1,2 and organ replacement therapy for the cutaneous, 3,4 neural, 5,6 ophthalmic, 7 cardiovascular, 8–10 pulmonary, 11,12 and skeletal (bone and cartilage) systems, 13–15 and also for testing the efficacies of new drugs in in vitro cell culture platforms. 16–20 For applications in these fields, scaffolds of biomimetic microstructures have been developed that can reproduce specific functions of the native organ by mimicking in vivo cellular microenvironments.…”

Role of biomaterials in the diagnosis, prevention, treatment, and study of corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19)

“…Pertinent tissue engineering work in combating the Coronavirus can be categorized as in vitro models to evaluate the proposed treatment efficiency, drug delivery approaches, and vaccines [18]. Among various tissue engineering techniques, 3D bioprinting [21][22][23], organoid engineering [24,25], and microfluidic organ-on-a-chip systems [26][27][28] are accepted to be the best approaches to design and develop effective in vitro tissue models [29].…”