Biotechnology company, MIMETAS, in collaboration with pharmaceutical company, Roche, has developed an organ-on-a-chip system that supports the evaluation of intestinal permeability in perfused 3D gut tubules when exposed to pharmacological compounds.
Stomach
Research supporting the development and application of this novel technology was published in Nature Communications earlier this week.
Researchers from both companies, involved in the study, grew more than 350 gut tubules under flow so that leak-tight structures were formed. These were then evaluated for intestinal barrier function in real-time using automated microscopy and image analysis.
The gut tubules in the study were polarised and leak-tight after four days in culture, demonstrating an increased expression of specific transporters and receptors. As a result of this research, the gut model developed by MIMETAS and Roche has applicability in toxicology assessments of pharmacological compounds and the potential to be used in disease modelling studies and research on the intestinal barrier.
“This article in a major journal shows the world what the OrganoPlate platform is capable of. With 350 gut tubes and over 20,000 data points measured, this is the largest organ-on-a-chip dataset ever published. It demonstrates that 3D cell culture under perfusion flow isn’t necessarily complex to do. In fact, every cell biologist is now able to work with OrganoPlates and reproduce our results,” explained Paul Vulto, managing director of MIMETAS and senior author on the paper.
“Scientists at MIMETAS and elsewhere around the world are developing stunning 3D cell culture models in the OrganoPlate platform every day. The fact that one can culture tubules, blood vessels, and tissue co-cultures in 3D, without artificial membranes and with an unprecedented imaging quality, enables researchers to study human tissue biology in a completely novel way,” he added. “We are proud to support these fantastic scientists in their search for ever more physiologically relevant tissue models. We are now making this technology available to every scientist in the world.”