Researchers develop 'Placenta-on-a-chip' to study inner workings of placenta and its role in pregnancy
The development of such chips allows researchers to test the effect of drugs now in development and to ask and test fundamental biological questions, said Amar Basu, Ph.D., associate professor of WSU Electrical and Computer Engineering and Biomedical Engineering, and Mark Ming-Cheng Cheng, Ph.D., associate professor of WSU Electrical and Computer Engineering and director of the Nanofabrication Core. The pair collaborate with researchers in the PRB on placenta-on-a-chip production and advancement.
One challenge in medicine is the lack of cell and tissue models that recreate the environment in the body. Drugs and other therapies are often tested on cells layered in petri dishes, but such models do not accurately reflect the body's complex environment, which includes three-dimensional connective matrix, multilayer structures and physical stimuli such as mechanical stress and temperature, Drs. Basu and Cheng explained. As a result, therapies that appear effective in the lab environment often fail during animal or human trials. Organ-on-a-chip systems mimic the microstructures and microenvironment in the body. For patients, this will ultimately translate into better therapies and a more rapid development pipeline. In the future, organs-on-a-chip may be synthesized directly from patient samples, which will verify personalized treatments for an individual.
Additional resources:
http://www.businessinsider.com/scientists-made-a-placenta-on-a-chip-prototype-2015-6