Combined placenta-embryo microphysiological system

Augmented cell culture test to detect substances that are directly or indirectly harmful to embryos, which includes a combination of placental and embryonic tissue developed and published in Advanced Biology. Applications include the testing of new drugs and chemicals.

Enlarged view: HDN chip for embryotoxicity
Microfluidic chip hosting embryonic tissue in suspended drops of culture medium (in green), viewed from below. Placental cells are cultivated on a membrane in the light-blue area in the center.

The development of a dedicated microfluidic device for co-cultivation of a placental barrier and 3D embryoid bodies to enable systemic toxicity testing at the embryo–maternal interface was reported in an article in Advanced Biology by Julia Booos and coworkers (J. Boos, et al., "Microfluidic co-​culture platform to recapitulate the maternal–placental–embryonic axis", Advanced Biology 2021, Article 2100609). The microfluidic platform features simple handling and recuperation of both tissue models, which facilitates post-hoc in-depth analysis at the tissue and single-cell level. Gravity-driven flow enables inter-tissue communication through the liquid phase as well as simple and robust operation and renders the platform parallelizable. As a proof of concept and to demonstrate platform use for systemic embryotoxicity testing in vitro, maternal exposure to plastic microparticles was emulated, and microparticle effects on the embryo–placental co-culture were investigated.

external page Advanced Biology (previously Advanced Biosystems) covers life-​science research across multiple disciplines including but not limited to biology, chemistry, physics, medical science and computer science, applied to biologically relevant systems at all scales, ranging from molecular to whole-​organism level and beyond.

Link to ETH life article

external page Link to paper in Advanced Biology

 

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