The human body is incredibly complex, all the way down to the intricate channels of blood vessels. Researchers at Texas A&M University (TAMU) compare them to big city highways because they’re “full of curves, branches, merges, and congestion.”
Replicating the blood vessels is just as complex. Scientists say conventional lab models portray them as straight roads.
Researchers from TAMU’s Department of Biomedical Engineering developed a customizable vessel-chip method, designed to mimic the complex roads of blood vessels.
Blood Vessel Mimicking Chip
Researchers say the chip is designed to enable more accurate vascular disease research. Vessel-chips are engineered microfluidic devices that mimic blood vessels at a microscopic level. Additionally, they are patient-specific and don’t require animal testing.
Jennifer Lee is a biomedical engineering master’s student who helped design the vessel-chip that replicates vascular structures.
Explore Tomorrow's World From Your Inbox
Get the latest science, technology, and sustainability content delivered to your inbox.
I understand that by providing my email address, I agree to receive emails from Tomorrow's World Today. I understand that I may opt out of receiving such communications at any time.
“There are branched vessels, or aneurysms that have sudden expansion, and then stenosis that restricts the vessel. All these different types of vessels cause the blood flow pattern to be significantly changed, and the inside of the blood vessel is affected by the level of shear stress caused by these flow patterns,” Lee said. “That’s what we wanted to model.”
The development opens opportunities for researchers to understand vascular disease in ways they have never been able to.
“Not only can you make these structures complex, you can put actual cellular and tissue material inside them and make them living,” Dr. Abhishek Jain, Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering. “These are the sites where vascular diseases tend to develop, so understanding them is critical.”
Jain and Lee want to expand their research to include various cell types. Lee’s research only includes cells that make up the lining of the blood vessel, called endothelial cells. The researchers want to include other cells to see how they interact with each other and the blood flow.
“We are progressing and creating what we call the fourth dimensionality of organs-on-a-chip, where we not only focus on the cells and the flow, but this interaction of cells and flow in more complex architectural states, which is a new direction in the field,” Jain said.
The research was published in Lab on a Chip.
