The future of cardiovascular disease research and prevention will not be limited to anatomical mice or to cultured heart cells in petri dishes.Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, medical researchers are trying to use a newly developed micro Electromechanical Systems (MEMS) microfluidic chip to achieve this goal.
The chip simulates the precise blood flow in arteries as fat and cholesterol accumulate inside the internal arterial wall plaque in which the resulting atherosclerosis limits blood flow and may lead to heart disease The key to the chip is the ability to mimic the inflammatory response of cardiovascular cells - a reaction that can block the blood supply and prevent heart attacks if these reactions can be dampened.
In the experiment, researchers first used artificial blood to perfect the flow path through the microfluidic 'blood vessels' and then used the real blood to model the inflammation that needed to be eliminated to prevent a heart attack because the inner walls of the blood vessels were closely observed on the chip Cell response, the team claimed that their approach to modeling atherosclerosis is far superior to methods that use cultured cells or laboratory animal modeling conditions.
The team hopes to learn how to regulate vasoconstriction by a variety of means to prevent or at least mitigate heart attacks so far the researchers have focused on the overall biomechanics of cardiac blood flow and precisely the shape of the heart's blood vessels and Geometry modeling to pinpoint causes of vasoconstriction.
This inch-only chip has two stacked chambers separated by a soft polymer membrane to simulate the conditions that lead to a heart attack.The bottom chamber contains compressed air and the top chamber contains blood (or blood sample test Fluid.) To accurately model a real heart, the researchers cultured endothelial cells from the coronary veins and filled them with a fluid-filled chamber that was operated by pumping air into a soft plenum , Pushing the membrane to mimic blocked blood flow in blocked arteries.
The researchers found that endothelial cells release a protein that causes atherosclerosis as vascular blockages worsen, and when using real blood simulations, the accumulation of immune cells proceeds more rapidly into plaque-blocking lipids in the arteries.
According to Han Wei Hou, head of chip development, the chip accurately models these known signs of heart disease, making it the ideal device to test new therapies.
The team details the findings in these articles: 'Atherosclerosis-on-a-Chip: A Tunable 3D Stenotic Blood Vessel Microdevice, An article published January 2 'A tunable microfluidic 3D stenosis model for studying A tunable microfluidic 3D stenosis model to study leukocyte-endothelial interactions in atherosclerosis).
Compile: Luffy Liu