Advances in microfluidic in vitro systems for neurological disease modeling

Accepted/In Press date: 19 December 2020

e-pub ahead of print date: 13 February 2021

Published date: May 2021

Additional Information: Funding Information: We gratefully acknowledge support from the UK Organ‐on‐a‐Chip Technologies Network ( www.organonachip.org.uk/ ), which is funded by UKRI via the Technologies Touching Life Scheme (Grant reference MR/R02569X/1). As members of the Organ‐on‐a‐Chip Technologies Network from diverse fields in both academic and industrial sectors, the authors of this review were brought together in an initiative to surmise the key development, challenges, and unmet needs within the field. Funding Information: MPS are currently providing new insights into physiological and pathophysiological phenomena in the context of a specific functional unit of an organ or tissue, yet they fall short in modeling systemic responses and multi‐organ interactions which typically necessitate the use of animal models, such as in the study of the gut brain axis, brain cancer metastasis, and neuro‐immune networks. There have been a number of efforts to link multiple MPS to mimic key organ–organ reciprocal actions and more ambitiously in “Body on Chip” projects, such as the $37 million Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) backed “Body on chip” project at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering to integrate 10 human organ‐on‐chips. The MINERVA (MIcrobiota‐Gut‐BraiN EngineeRed platform to eVAluate intestinal microflora impact on brain functionality) project, funded by the European Research Council represents a specifically brain focused attempt to connect multiple microfluidic cultures (microbiota, gut epithelial barrier, immune cells, BBB, and brain) aiming to study the impact of intestinal microflora on neurodegeneration (Raimondi et al., 2019 ). A discussion of such programs is beyond the scope of this review, but Sung et al. provide a detailed analysis of how such ambitious large‐scale projects may in future prove useful in delineating the contribution of organ–organ cross‐talk in health and disease (Sung et al., 2019 ). While linking multiple MPS comes with a unique set of challenges along with significantly increased complexity and expense, specific interactions between defined functional units are already being used to provide physiologically relevant insights, such as BBB‐brain metabolic coupling (Maoz et al., 2018 ) and brain metastasis (Yi et al., 2019 ). Funding Information: We gratefully acknowledge support from the UK Organ-on-a-Chip Technologies Network (www.organonachip.org.uk/), which is funded by UKRI via the Technologies Touching Life Scheme (Grant reference MR/R02569X/1). As members of the Organ-on-a-Chip Technologies Network from diverse fields in both academic and industrial sectors, the authors of this review were brought together in an initiative to surmise the key development, challenges, and unmet needs within the field. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 The Authors. Journal of Neuroscience Research published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.

Keywords: Alzheimer's, CNS, MPS, organ-on-chip, Parkinson's, stroke

Local EPrints ID: 448129

URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/448129

DOI: doi:10.1002/jnr.24794

ISSN: 0360-4012

PURE UUID: 518f237b-6536-4c27-a6ea-7e75515a0bd3

ORCID for Sandrine Willaime-Morawek: orcid.org/0000-0002-1121-6419

Date deposited: 01 Apr 2021 15:59

Last modified: 18 Mar 2024 03:09