Organ-on-a-disc puts a spin on Organ-on-a-chip with centrifugal microfluidics

Organ-on-a-chip systems are an emerging technology that uses specially designed microfluidic chips to simulate the function and physiological responses of an organ. However, practical applications of the emerging technology have been limited by its reliance on manual handling and the subsequent low-throughput.

To overcome these limitations and achieve better throughput, Schneider et al. developed Organ-on-a-disc, or Organ-Disc, by combining the concepts of Organ-on-a-chip with centrifugal microfluidics.

“This technology enables the parallelization and automation of microphysiological systems just by simple disc rotation,” said author Peter Loskill.

Their research utilized the Lab-on-a-disc platform, a system that uses centrifugal force as a way to pump liquid. “Instead of complex pumping infrastructure and annoying tubing connections, we only need a small motor that spins the Organ-Discs,” said Loskill. “Thereby it is easy to generate and culture a large number of tissue constructs simultaneously based on centrifugal forces created by the spinning of the Organ-Disc.”

The authors fabricated PDMS-free Organ-Discs using thermoplastic materials and scalable fabrication techniques. Driven by rotation, the discs enabled the parallelized generation and culture of multiple 3D cell constructs on the same disc, loading cells into 20 tissue chambers, where robust and reliable cultures were formed and lasted for several days.

“Hopefully, our work will pave the way for a new generation of microphysiological systems applicable both for high-throughput experimentation as well as decentralized personalized medicine,” said Loskill.

In the future, the technology could be used for pharmaceutical testing. Loskill imagines that one day it could be used to create patient-specific organ-models for tailored, individualized treatment.

Source: “Organ-on-a-disc: A platform technology for the centrifugal generation and culture of microphysiological 3D cell constructs amenable for automation and parallelization,” by Stefan Schneider, Florian Erdemann, Oliver Schneider, Thomas Hutschalik, and Peter Loskill, APL Bioengineering (2020). The article can be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0019766 .