Biosensing for organ-on-a-chip platforms

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Recent advances in tissue engineering and microfluidics have enabled the creation of “organ-on-a-chip” platforms that mimic the functions of human organs and tissues better than conventional Petri dish-based cell culture systems. These technologies hold great promise for disease modeling, drug discovery, and as bioreactor test beds to develop engineered tissues. Despite their great potential, a persistent limitation of organ-on-a-chip and microfluidic cell culture platforms is that they rely on manual, off-chip analytical methods, which creates an analysis bottleneck and limits the value of these platforms. Integration of on-chip sensing could enable higher-throughput and higher-content analyses, real-time measurement of cell and tissue function, and even feedback control of dynamic culture microsystems. Strikingly, while there have been significant advances in incorporating biosensors into point-of-care microfluidic devices, biosensors have not been integrated into microtissue and organ-on-a-chip platforms largely because of the engineering challenges involved. ******Here, we propose a research program to directly address these limitations by leveraging our novel microfluidic and microtissues technologies to engineer organ-on-a-chip platforms with on-chip biosensing capabilities. To do so, we investigate fundamental aspects of biotransport and biosensing to enable biomolecule detection in dynamic microfluidic environments; develop sensitive on-chip strain sensors to measure cell contraction forces; and identify process control strategies to engineer mechanically robust tissues. This knowledge will be applied to generate novel organ-on-a-chip models for monitoring transport across the blood-brain-barrier; for measuring heart muscle contraction on-chip; and for optimizing protocols for mechanical stimulation of engineered tissues.******The graduate and undergraduate students trained in this research program will be equipped with the scientific and professional skills required to apply the knowledge generated by their research for long-term impact and to lead bold new initiatives in biosensing, biomicrofluidics, and biotechnology in the future.**