Researchers Create Placenta-On-A-Chip To Study Biology Of Human Placenta
National Institutes of Health (NIH) researchers want to study the biology of human placenta to better understand its role in pregnancy.
But, studying the human placenta has challenges. Because the placenta is a temporary organ that only develops during pregnancy, it comes with a shelf life, a wide range of variables and can pose a risk to the fetus. Conventional methods – in vitro models, animal models or lab-grown human cells – are helpful, but are limited because they don’t mimic the human physiological process.
In order to study the biology of the placenta, researchers needed to develop a micro-engineered biometric model to replicate the natural biology, architecture and function of the placenta. To do this, they turned to organ-on-a-chip technologies, which are being developed to accelerate biomedical advances.
Organ-on-a-chip technologies are microfluidic devices that are a 3D cell culture of real organs – skin, cartilage, bone, artery, heart, kidney, etc. They are created with microchip manufacturing methods where the perfused chambers have living cells that stimulate tissue and organ physiology. The perfusion chambers maintain the cells in a healthy state but also allow researchers to observe living cells in high resolution.
When it comes to the placenta – the main interface/conduit between a mother and a fetus – researchers want to learn more about how the placenta manages all this two way traffic, effectively transporting some substances (nutrients, oxygen) while blocking others (bacteria, viruses). When that transportation system doesn’t work correctly, the health of the mother and fetus are impacted.
By better understanding how the placenta manages all this traffic, researchers hope to help provide insight into better placental health and improve pregnancies.
The findings were published on June 15, 2015 in the The Journal of Maternal-Fetal & Neonatal Medicine.
Source: Forbes
