Measuring and regulating oxygen levels in microphysiological systems: design, material, and sensor considerations.

As microfabrication techniques and tissue engineering methods improve, microphysiological systems (MPS) are being engineered that recapitulate complex physiological and pathophysiological states to supplement and challenge traditional animal models. Although MPS provide unique microenvironments that transcend common 2D cell culture, without proper regulation of oxygen content, MPS often fail to provide the biomimetic environment necessary to activate and investigate fundamental pathways of cellular metabolism and sub-cellular level. Oxygen exists in the human body in various concentrations and partial pressures; moreover, it fluctuates dramatically depending on fasting, exercise, and sleep patterns. Regulating oxygen content inside MPS necessitates a sensitive biological sensor to quantify oxygen content in real-time. Measuring oxygen in a microdevice is a non-trivial requirement for studies focused on understanding how oxygen impacts cellular processes, including angiogenesis and tumorigenesis. Quantifying oxygen inside a microdevice can be achieved via an array of technologies, with each method having benefits and limitations in terms of sensitivity, limits of detection, and invasiveness that must be considered and optimized. This article will review oxygen physiology in organ systems and offer comparisons of organ-specific MPS that do and do not consider oxygen microenvironments. Materials used in microphysiological models will also be analyzed in terms of their ability to control oxygen. Finally, oxygen sensor technologies are critically compared and evaluated for use in MPS.

Monitoring of Microphysiological Systems: Integrating Sensors and Real-Time Data Analysis toward Autonomous Decision-Making.

Microphysiological systems replicate human organ function and are promising technologies for discovery of translatable biomarkers, pharmaceuticals, and regenerative therapies. Because microphysiological systems require complex microscale anatomical structures and heterogeneous cell populations, a major challenge remains to manufacture and operate these products with reproducible and standardized function. In this Perspective, three stages of microphysiological system monitoring, including process, development, and function, are assessed. The unique features and remaining technical challenges for the required sensors are discussed. Monitoring of microphysiological systems requires nondestructive, continuous biosensors and imaging techniques. With such tools, the extent of cellular and tissue development, as well as function, can be autonomously determined and optimized by correlating physical and chemical sensor outputs with markers of physiological performance. Ultimately, data fusion and analyses across process, development, and function monitors can be implemented to adopt microphysiological systems for broad research and commercial applications.

Integrated phosphorescence-based photonic biosensor (iPOB) for monitoring oxygen levels in 3D cell culture systems.

Physiological processes, such as respiration, circulation, digestion, and many pathologies alter oxygen concentration in the blood and tissue. When designing culture systems to recapitulate the in vivo oxygen environment, it is important to integrate systems for monitoring and controlling oxygen concentration. Herein, we report the design and engineering of a system to remotely monitor and control oxygen concentration inside a device for 3D cell culture. We integrate a photonic oxygen biosensor into the 3D tissue scaffold and regulate oxygen concentration via the control of purging gas flow. The integrated phosphorescence-based oxygen biosensor employs the quenching of palladium-benzoporphyrin by molecular oxygen to transduce the local oxygen concentration in the 3D tissue scaffold. The system is validated by testing the effects of normoxic and hypoxic culture conditions on healthy and tumorigenic breast epithelial cells, MCF-10A cells and BT474 cells, respectively. Under hypoxic conditions, both cell types exhibited upregulation of downstream target genes for the hypoxia marker gene, hypoxia-inducible factor 1α (HIF1A). Lastly, by monitoring the real-time fluctuation of oxygen concentration, we illustrated the formation of hypoxic culture conditions due to limited diffusion of oxygen through 3D tissue scaffolds.

Cardiac Stem Cell Patch Integrated with Microengineered Blood Vessels Promotes Cardiomyocyte Proliferation and Neovascularization after Acute Myocardial Infarction.

Cardiac stem cell (CSC) therapy has shown preclinical and clinical evidence for ischemic heart repair but is limited by low cellular engraftment and survival after transplantation. Previous versions of the cardiac patch strategy improve stem cell engraftment and encourage repair of cardiac tissue. However, cardiac patches that can enhance cardiomyogenesis and angiogenesis at the injured site remain elusive. Therapies that target cardiomyocyte proliferation and new blood vessel formation hold great potential for the protection against acute myocardial infarction (MI). Here, we report a new strategy for creating a vascularized cardiac patch in a facile and modular fashion by leveraging microfluidic hydrodynamic focusing to construct the biomimetic microvessels (BMVs) that include human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) lining the luminal surface and then encapsulating the BMVs in a fibrin gel spiked with human CSCs. We show that the endothelialized BMVs mimicked the natural architecture and function of capillaries and that the resultant vascularized cardiac patch (BMV-CSC patch) exhibited equivalent release of paracrine factors compared to those of coculture of genuine human CSCs and HUVECs after 7 days of in vitro culture. In a rat model of acute MI, the BMV-CSC patch therapy induced profound mitotic activities of cardiomyocytes in the peri-infarct region 4 weeks post-treatment. A significant increase in myocardial capillary density was noted in the infarcted hearts that received BMV-CSC patch treatment compared to the infarcted hearts treated with conventional CSC patches. The striking therapeutic benefits and the fast and facile fabrication of the BMV-CSC patch make it promising for practical applications. Our findings suggest that the BMV-CSC patch strategy may open up new possibilities for the treatment of ischemic heart injury.

A System for Assessment of Canine-Human Interaction during Animal-Assisted Therapies.

Animal-assisted therapies (AAT) are becoming increasingly common to help hospitalized patients, especially in oncology units. There is a critical need for methods and technologies that can enable a quantifiable understanding of AAT to objectively demonstrate its efficacy and improve its efficiency. In this paper, we present our preliminary efforts towards the development of wireless sensor systems to simultaneously detect the related behavioral (activity level, movement, stroking) and physiological signals (heart rate/variability) of humans and animals during their interaction. To detect heart rate, we tested two different techniques based on wearable or contactless electrocardiography. In this preliminary evaluation, we were able to assess these parameters successfully and identify the design challenges towards deployment of these systems in larger clinical studies.