Brain-on-a-Chip Platform

Neurological diseases cause huge social losses and heavy annual economic burdens, it is urgent to develop new drugs. Equipped with world-leading technology platforms and professional scientific staff, Creative Biolabs describes the novel Brain-on-a-Chip platform for our clients all over the world.

Current Status of Neurological Diseases

In recent decades, neurological diseases cause huge social losses and heavy annual economic burdens. In the United States alone, more than 7 million adults suffer from neurodegenerative diseases. However, low drug development success rates for central nervous system (CNS) diseases have led to scaling back development programs by pharmaceutical companies. Therefore, it is urgent to develop technologies and platforms to overcome the extreme challenges associated with this field.

In particular, the complexity of the human brain presents significant challenges for neuropharmaceutical development and has become a key factor in the massive failure of CNS drug development efforts. For example, the unique microenvironmental changes of the brain are associated with the pathogenesis of various neurodegenerative diseases. What’s more, changes in unique brain cell structure and neuronal connections can indicate the onset of disease or neuronal degeneration. Multiple cell types in different regions of the brain have unique functions.

Fig.1 The hierarchical organization of the brain as a multiscale system.¹

Introduction of Brain-on-a-Chip

First described in 2010, Organs-on-a-Chip (OoCs) is able to identify novel disease mechanisms and correlate in vitro data with clinical studies. Till now, various Ooc systems have been developed based on different organs, such as the heart, brain, liver, kidney, etc. In general, an OoC consists of one or more cell cultures in a microfluidic chip and allows the application of physical, mechanical, and chemical stimuli to mimic the human microenvironment. Compared to traditional animal models, the OoC system offers additional advantages for CNS modeling. For example, the ability of OoC systems to integrate traffic can simulate organ-organ interactions. In addition, the chip design further generates cell-cell interactions similar to the in vivo microenvironment. Given these advantages, many microfluidics-based brain-on-chip platforms have been developed in recent years.

Creative Biolabs has built the Brains-on-a-Chip platform to mimic brain composition and functions. This is an in vitro method of modeling the central nervous system (CNS), often referring to microfluidic-based systems containing microengineered tissue. Compared with traditional cell culture models, our Brains-on-a-Chip platform provides meaningful added value. Some brain-on-a-chip platforms enable the incorporation of functional BBB layers into cultures of brain parenchymal cells to significantly enhance BBB properties. Since the BBB is the main limiting factor for drug delivery to the brain, this in vitro model can provide important insights for drug development and smoothly predict drug effects.

Creative Biolabs is well-equipped and versed in drug development to assist our customers’ research and project development. If you are interested in our services, please do not hesitate to contact us for more details.

Reference

1. Maoz, B.M. Brain-on-a-Chip: Characterizing the next generation of advanced in vitro platforms for modeling the central nervous system. APL bioengineering. 2021, 5(3): 030902. Distributed under Open Access License CC BY 4.0 without modification.