Multisensor-integrated organs-on-chips platform for automated and continual in situ monitoring of organoid behaviors.

Organ-on-a-chip systems are miniaturized microfluidic 3D human tissue and organ models designed to recapitulate the important biological and physiological parameters of their in vivo counterparts. They have recently emerged as a viable platform for personalized medicine and drug screening. These in vitro models, featuring biomimetic compositions, architectures, and functions, are expected to replace the conventional planar, static cell cultures and bridge the gap between the currently used preclinical animal models and the human body. Multiple organoid models may be further connected together through the microfluidics in a similar manner in which they are arranged in vivo, providing the capability to analyze multiorgan interactions. Although a wide variety of human organ-on-a-chip models have been created, there are limited efforts on the integration of multisensor systems. However, in situ continual measuring is critical in precise assessment of the microenvironment parameters and the dynamic responses of the organs to pharmaceutical compounds over extended periods of time. In addition, automated and noninvasive capability is strongly desired for long-term monitoring. Here, we report a fully integrated modular physical, biochemical, and optical sensing platform through a fluidics-routing breadboard, which operates organ-on-a-chip units in a continual, dynamic, and automated manner. We believe that this platform technology has paved a potential avenue to promote the performance of current organ-on-a-chip models in drug screening by integrating a multitude of real-time sensors to achieve automated in situ monitoring of biophysical and biochemical parameters.

A microfluidic optical platform for real-time monitoring of pH and oxygen in microfluidic bioreactors and organ-on-chip devices.

There is a growing interest to develop microfluidic bioreactors and organ-on-chip platforms with integrated sensors to monitor their physicochemical properties and to maintain a well-controlled microenvironment for cultured organoids. Conventional sensing devices cannot be easily integrated with microfluidic organ-on-chip systems with low-volume bioreactors for continual monitoring. This paper reports on the development of a multi-analyte optical sensing module for dynamic measurements of pH and dissolved oxygen levels in the culture medium. The sensing system was constructed using low-cost electro-optics including light-emitting diodes and silicon photodiodes. The sensing module includes an optically transparent window for measuring light intensity, and the module could be connected directly to a perfusion bioreactor without any specific modifications to the microfluidic device design. A compact, user-friendly, and low-cost electronic interface was developed to control the optical transducer and signal acquisition from photodiodes. The platform enabled convenient integration of the optical sensing module with a microfluidic bioreactor. Human dermal fibroblasts were cultivated in the bioreactor, and the values of pH and dissolved oxygen levels in the flowing culture medium were measured continuously for up to 3 days. Our integrated microfluidic system provides a new analytical platform with ease of fabrication and operation, which can be adapted for applications in various microfluidic cell culture and organ-on-chip devices.