Customizable Microfluidic Origami Liver-on-a-Chip (oLOC)
Publication Date
5-1-2022
Document Type
Article
Publication Title
Advanced Materials Technologies
Volume
7
Issue
5
DOI
10.1002/admt.202100677
Abstract
The design and manufacture of an origami-based liver-on-a-chip device is presented, together with demonstrations of the chip's effectiveness at recapitulating some of the liver's key in vivo architecture, physical microenvironment, and functions. Laser-cut layers of polyimide tape are folded together with polycarbonate nanoporous membranes to create a stack of three adjacent flow chambers separated by the membranes. Endothelial cells are seeded in the upper and lower flow chambers to simulate sinusoids, and hepatocytes are seeded in the middle flow chamber. Nutrients and metabolites flow through the simulated sinusoids and diffuse between the vascular pathways and the hepatocyte layers, mimicking physiological microcirculation. Studies of cell viability, metabolic functions, and hepatotoxicity of pharmaceutical compounds show that the endothelialized liver-on-a-chip model is conducive to maintaining hepatocyte functions and evaluation of the hepatotoxicity of drugs. The unique origami approach speeds chip development and optimization, effectively simplifying the laboratory-scale fabrication of on-chip models of human tissues without necessarily reducing their structural and functional sophistication.
Funding Number
CBET‐EBMS‐1936105
Funding Sponsor
National Science Foundation
Keywords
biofabrication, organ-on-a-chip, tissue modeling, vascularization
Department
Mathematics and Statistics
Recommended Citation
Xin Xie, Sushila Maharjan, Chastity Kelly, Tian Liu, Robert J. Lang, Roger Alperin, Shikha Sebastian, Diana Bonilla, Sakura Gandolfo, Yasmine Boukataya, Seyed Mohammad Siadat, Yu Shrike Zhang, and Carol Livermore. "Customizable Microfluidic Origami Liver-on-a-Chip (oLOC)" Advanced Materials Technologies (2022). https://doi.org/10.1002/admt.202100677
