Multi-channel cell co-culture for drug development based on glass microfluidic chip-mass spectrometry coupled platform

Technological advances for analyzing the content of organ-on-a-chip by mass spectrometry

Three-dimensional (3D) cell cultures, including organ-on-a-chip (OOC) devices, offer the possibility to mimic human physiology conditions better than 2D models. The organ-on-a-chip devices have a wide range of applications, including mechanical studies, functional validation, and toxicology investigations. Despite many advances in this field, the major challenge with the use of organ-on-a-chips relies on the lack of online analysis methods preventing the real-time observation of cultured cells. Mass spectrometry is a promising analytical technique for real-time analysis of cell excretes from organ-on-a-chip models. This is due to its high sensitivity, selectivity, and ability to tentatively identify a large variety of unknown compounds, ranging from metabolites, lipids, and peptides to proteins. However, the hyphenation of organ-on-a-chip with MS is largely hampered by the nature of the media used, and the presence of nonvolatile buffers. This in turn stalls the straightforward and online connection of organ-on-a-chip outlet to MS. To overcome this challenge, multiple advances have been made to pre-treat samples right after organ-on-a-chip and just before MS. In this review, we summarised these technological advances and exhaustively evaluated their benefits and shortcomings for successful hyphenation of organ-on-a-chip with MS.

Microfluidic nanodevices for drug sensing and screening applications

The outbreak of pandemics (e.g., severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2 in 2019), influenza A viruses (H1N1 in 2009), etc.), and worldwide spike in the aging population have created unprecedented urgency for developing new drugs to improve disease treatment. As a result, extensive efforts have been made to design novel techniques for efficient drug monitoring and screening, which form the backbone of drug development. Compared to traditional techniques, microfluidics-based platforms have emerged as promising alternatives for high-throughput drug screening due to their inherent miniaturization characteristics, low sample consumption, integration, and compatibility with diverse analytical strategies. Moreover, the microfluidic-based models utilizing human cells to produce in-vitro biomimetics of the human body pave new ways to predict more accurate drug effects in humans. This review provides a comprehensive summary of different microfluidics-based drug sensing and screening strategies and briefly discusses their advantages. Most importantly, an in-depth outlook of the commonly used detection techniques integrated with microfluidic chips for highly sensitive drug screening is provided. Then, the influence of critical parameters such as sensing materials and microfluidic platform geometries on screening performance is summarized. This review also outlines the recent applications of microfluidic approaches for screening therapeutic and illicit drugs. Moreover, the current challenges and the future perspective of this research field is elaborately highlighted, which we believe will contribute immensely towards significant achievements in all aspects of drug development.

Optimization and Application of A Bionic System of Dynamic Co-Culture with Hepatocytes and Renal Cells Based on Microfluidic Chip Technique in Evaluating Materials of Health Food

We aimed to explore the optimization and application of a bionic system of dynamic co-culture with hepatocytes and renal cells based on the microfluidic chip technique in evaluating emodin, which might replace the conventionally cytological evaluation technique of health food. After optimal experiments, the improved bionic system was composed of human hepatocellular carcinoma cells (HepG2), human renal glomerular endothelial cells (HRGECs), rat tail collagen type I, and gelatin with optimized concentrations (1.3 mg/mL + 7.5%). The applicability of the bionic system indicated that the growth stability was appropriate (CV: 7.36%), and the cell viability of that gradually decreased with the increasing of emodin concentration from 0−100 μM, which statistic significances were at 50 and 100 μM (p < 0.05), and the stained results of dead/live cells also showed the same trend. The LDH level appeared rising trend after decline between 0 μM and 100 μM emodi, and the level of that at 100 μM emodin was significantly higher than that at 25 μM and 50 μM emodin, respectively. The BUN level continuously and significantly declined with the increasing of emodin concentration (p < 0.05). Our research realized the application of this optimized bionic system in evaluating emodin, and provided a useful platform and reference for further in vitro alternative research with regard to evaluating the efficacies of health food in the future.

Recent progress of microfluidic technology for pharmaceutical analysis

In recent years, the progress of microfluidic technology has provided new tools for pharmaceutical analysis and the proposal of pharm-lab-on-a-chip is appealing for its great potential to integrate pharmaceutical test and pharmacological test in a single chip system. Here, we summarize and highlight recent advances of chip-based principles, techniques and devices for pharmaceutical test and pharmacological/toxicological test focusing on the separation and analysis of drug molecules on a chip and the construction of pharmacological models on a chip as well as their demonstrative applications in quality control, drug screening and precision medicine. The trend and challenge of microfluidic technology for pharmaceutical analysis are also discussed and prospected. We hope this review would update the insight and development of pharm-lab-on-a-chip.

An integrated biomimetic array chip for high-throughput co-culture of liver and tumor microtissues for advanced anticancer bioactivity screening

The integration of liver metabolism and hepatotoxicity evaluation for anticancer bioactivity assays in vitro is of fundamental importance to better predict the efficacy and safety of anticancer drugs. In particular, there is a lack of co-culture techniques that can fully mimic the physiological microenvironment at speeds consistent with high-throughput screening. Herein, an integrated Biomimetic Array Chip (iBAC) that enables co-culture of three-dimensional (3D) liver and tumor microtissues was developed for advanced anticancer bioactivity screening at throughputs. The iBAC consisted of two functional chips, a liver chip and a tumor chip containing a cross-shaped protrusion on the tip of a pillar array for co-culture. First, the 3D biomimetic liver microtissue on the liver chip was optimized to mimic superior liver function. Next, the constructed iBAC was evaluated for metabolism-induced anticancer bioactivity by using model prodrugs and for the effect of drug-drug interactions. Finally, the functionality of the iBAC for simultaneous evaluation of anticancer bioactivity and hepatotoxicity was verified. The iBAC exhibits superior performance in biomimetic and integrated functions as well as operationally simple and high-throughput co-culture that makes a good balance between functionality and throughput. Overall, the iBAC provides an integrated, biomimetic and high-throughput co-culture platform to complement the conventional bioactivity assay in tiered screening strategies and could be used as a secondary screening tool at the early phase of drug development.