Nanobio

at the interface of nanotechnology and life sciences

Resealable Organ-On-a-Chip (ResOOC)

Heart diseases are one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Advances have been made to use the Organ-On-a-Chip technology to mimic organs and its (patho)physiology. The NanoBio Research Group focuses on the heart and is developing (together with their partners Micronit, Locsense and Ionovation) a resealable organ-on-a-chip platform for drug-screening.

The ResOOC consists of a chamber to culture heart cells. Moreover, electrodes are integrated to electrically stimulate the heart cells (pacing, e.g., synchronize heart beat) and electrically monitor the response of the heart cells in the presence of different drugs to treat heart disease or to study the cardiotoxic effect of for example chemotherapeutic agents. As a cell-source, human induced pluripotent cells are used (hIPSC; kindly provided by the AST group, University of Twente), as well as mouse cardiomyocytes (HL-1 cells; generous gift of prof. Bianca Brundel, Department of Physiology, Amsterdam UMC).

hIPSC cultured in the chip with integrated electrodes  (black) 

Finally, a fully integrated device will be developed to culture and pace heart cells and electrically monitor the cellular activity and drug responses, which can serve as a platform to study heart diseases.


Time period: September 2019 – January 2021
Projectleader: Floor Wolbers
Funding: TechForFuture

Partners:

micronit_logo
locsense
Ionovation-Logo-70
AST