The Integrated Heart/Cancer “Body-on-a Chip”
Engineers at the Kyoto University Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences have created a microfluidic “body-on-a-chip device for simultaneously testing toxicity levels from chemotherapy drugs on heart, liver, and kidney cells, both normal and cancerous. “The device is smaller than a microscope glass slide. It contains six tiny chambers; every two are connected by microchannels with a series of port inlets and valves. A pneumatic pump controls movement of fluid through the channels. Every two chambers and their separate microchannel system constitute one test bed. Three test beds in the device allow for the introduction of minor changes in each bed to simultaneously compare results.” MORE
Image Credit: Kyoto University Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences and MDTMag.com