Journal
LAB ON A CHIP
Volume 16, Issue 16, Pages 3065-3073Publisher
ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY
DOI: 10.1039/c6lc00259e
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- March of Dimes Prematurity Research Center at the University of Pennsylvania
- National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director's New Innovator Award [1DP2HL127720-01]
- NATIONAL HEART, LUNG, AND BLOOD INSTITUTE [DP2HL127720] Funding Source: NIH RePORTER
- NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH SCIENCES [P30ES013508] Funding Source: NIH RePORTER
Ask authors/readers for more resources
During human pregnancy, the fetal circulation is separated from maternal blood in the placenta by two cell layers - the fetal capillary endothelium and placental trophoblast. This placental barrier plays an essential role in fetal development and health by tightly regulating the exchange of endogenous and exogenous materials between the mother and the fetus. Here we present a microengineered device that provides a novel platform to mimic the structural and functional complexity of this specialized tissue in vitro. Our model is created in a multilayered microfluidic system that enables co-culture of human trophoblast cells and human fetal endothelial cells in a physiologically relevant spatial arrangement to replicate the characteristic architecture of the human placental barrier. We have engineered this co-culture model to induce progressive fusion of trophoblast cells and to form a syncytialized epithelium that resembles the syncytiotrophoblast in vivo. Our system also allows the cultured trophoblasts to form dense microvilli under dynamic flow conditions and to reconstitute expression and physiological localization of membrane transport proteins, such as glucose transporters (GLUTs), critical to the barrier function of the placenta. To provide a proof-of-principle for using this microdevice to recapitulate native function of the placental barrier, we demonstrated physiological transport of glucose across the microengineered maternal-fetal interface. Importantly, the rate of maternal-to-fetal glucose transfer in this system closely approximated that measured in ex vivo perfused human placentas. Our placenta-on-a-chip platform represents an important advance in the development of new technologies to model and study the physiological complexity of the human placenta for a wide variety of applications.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available