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Microbrain-On-A-Chip Device to Improve Drug Development & Testing

The brain is a particularly difficult target for drug development because it is surrounded by barriers that protect it from molecular or cellular intruders. Vanderbilt University researchers are making progress on a multi-million dollar research project to develop a 'microbrain on a chip.' The researchers' microbrain bioreactor concept has an upper chamber containing neurons and an artificial capillary that carries blood to the brain surrounded by the cells that make up the blood-brain barrier. The lower layer is filled with cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) and contains an artificial choroid plexus that makes CSF and a venule that carries blood away from the brain, along with a collection of cells that form the blood-CSF and CSF-brain barriers. Collectively, all these cells will reproduce the microenvironment found in the brain and the entire device will be about the size of a grain of rice. The researchers say the device will allow them to test the effectiveness of various drug and nutritional therapies designed to prevent both acute injuries like strokes and chronic diseases like obesity and epilepsy, as well as uncovering the potential adverse effects of experimental drugs.

Topics:
Diagnostics Medical Patient Monitoring Sensors Test & Measurement

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    Transcript

    00:00:00 imagine a very tiny human so small its brain and other organs are the size of rice now imagine this micro human testing everything from prescription drugs to toxins and chemicals a version of this micro human is real the idea is to create a human on a chip its brain is being built here at Vanderbilt led by professor of biomedical engineering physiology and physics John Wick's whoa

    00:00:27 and his team at the Vanderbilt Institute for Integrative Biosystems research and education you get cells that are directly derived from humans and you grow them up to create organs leading to much faster and more accurate testing it's clear that organs on a chip will help streamline the pharmaceutical pipeline and people should benefit from that without having to have drugs be

    00:00:53 pulled from the market because of unanticipated side effects Vanderbilt and fellow institutions are partnering in a multi-million dollar program sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and other government agencies today vanderbilt scientists are growing a version of a brain this is our neurovascular unit on a shift so it or we can just say brain on his chip

    00:01:18 they're specifically testing the blood-brain barrier to show when you deliver a drug does it get to the brain or does it not does it get to the brain in the form that you want other institutions are building hearts kidneys livers and more it's actually a great deal of fun it's a challenge another key contribution by Vanderbilt we have all the hardware to keep

    00:01:44 different organs alive and ready for study Mike Rowe clinical analyzers to see what the cells are doing perfusion controllers that keep the cells alive for weeks or a month or more this device is a mini laboratory a retrieved sample from that organ on a chip send it directly to our sensors here and allow us to determine if a major change has happened do

    00:02:10 that drug and incredibly complex because of the minut sighs one of the challenges in the organs on a chip business is that when you're building a milly human or a micro human you don't have very much fluid to work with that's where this invention comes in also created by Vanderbilt it tests exceptionally small amounts of fluid taken from the organs on a chip literally dots I think this is

    00:02:37 an extremely exciting time for both science and engineering a key element of this project was born by van der Bilt's youngest scientists some undergraduates and even high school students working with us came up with some very clever ideas to make very small pumps and valves that were very low cost and that has led to a complete watershed of projects now partner

    00:03:02 institutions are using van der Bilt's devices next steps the project in front of us is to have four organs merged to make probably about a 10 micro human human on a chip to see how multiple organs react from a certain drug or toxin mimicking a real human body from my point of view the trick is to get the hardware smaller and cheaper so that you can afford to put hundreds or thousands

    00:03:32 or tens of thousands of copies of it into toxicology and pharmacology lab revolutionising the future of medicine and our health you