Heart-on-a-chip paves the way for customisable devices Wednesday, 26 October 2016

American researchers have made a heart-on-a-chip which can be quickly fabricated and customised via 3D-printing, allowing researchers to easily collect reliable data for short-term and long-term studies.

The team from Harvard University believes this new approach to manufacturing may one day allow researchers to rapidly design organs-on-chips, also known as microphysiological systems, that match the properties of a specific disease or even an individual patient’s cells.

“This new programmable approach to building organs-on-chips not only allows us to easily change and customise the design of the system by integrating sensing but also drastically simplifies data acquisition,” said Johan Ulrik Lind, postdoctoral fellow at Harvard's John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Organs-on-chips mimic the structure and function of native tissue and have emerged as a promising alternative to traditional animal testing. Harvard researchers have developed microphysiological systems that mimic the microarchitecture and functions of lungs, hearts, tongues and intestines.

However, the fabrication and data collection process for organs-on-chips is expensive and laborious. Currently, these devices are built in clean rooms using a complex, multi-step lithographic process and collecting data requires microscopy or high-speed cameras.

The new chip contains multiple wells, each with separate tissues and integrated sensors, allowing researchers to study many engineered cardiac tissues at once. To demonstrate the efficacy of the device, the team performed drug studies and longer-term studies of gradual changes in the contractile stress of engineered cardiac tissues, which can occur over the course of several weeks.

“Researchers are often left working in the dark when it comes to gradual changes that occur during cardiac tissue development and maturation because there has been a lack of easy, non-invasive ways to measure the tissue functional performance,” said Lind. “These integrated sensors allow researchers to continuously collect data while tissues mature and improve their contractility. Similarly, they will enable studies of gradual effects of chronic exposure to toxins.”

[The heart-on-a-chip has built-in sensors that measure the contractile strength of the tissue, providing scientists with new possibilities for studying the musculature of the heart. Image courtesy of Johan Lind, Michael Rosnach, Disease Biophysics Group/Lori K. Sanders, Lewis Lab/Harvard University]

Developing an innovation industry in Australia will be one of the topics of discussion at the Australian Engineering Conference 2016 in Brisbane on November 23-25.