Integration of a local drug delivery system in a micro-fabricated Brain-on-Chip device

Integration of a local drug delivery system in a micro-fabricated Brain-on-Chip device

Mastyani, Hanieh (TU Delft Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering)

Dekker, R. (mentor)
Gaio, N. (mentor)
Pandraud, G. (mentor)
French, P.J. (mentor)

Delft University of Technology

Delft University of Technology

Biomedical Engineering | Medical Instruments

2018-09-04

The process of generating new therapeutics is a complex, highly demanding, and economically challenging procedure. From every 10.000 drug candidates that are introduced to the preclinical phase, only 5 are chosen to be tested for clinical trials. In order to overcome the challenges with current drug screening and toxicity tests, Organ-On-Chip (OOC) systems have been developed. OOCs mainly include a biocompatible membrane or a substrate on which cells or tissue slices are cultured. To perform drug screening tests, the OOC devices need to have a microchannel for drug delivery.
As an example of this class of devices, Brain-On-Chip is presented in this thesis which is developed by TU Delft in collaboration with Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC). The chip houses a brain slice and electrical activity of the brain tissue is studied before and after cortical spreading depression (CSD) induction. The device consists of a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) membrane embedding a microchannel. The PDMS membrane houses the brain tissue and the microchannel delivers chemical needed for CSD induction to a specific region of the tissue.
The main goal of this project is fabrication of the microchannel. To do so, an ultra-thick photoresist (PR) has been characterized which is used for the microchannel fabrication. Unlike most of current OOC fabrications, the Brian-on-chip device presented in this study is fabricated by a clean-room compatible procedure. This may result in a mass-production fabrication and a rapid commercialization. This study aims to validate the Brain-On-Chip by mice brain tissue provided by LUMC. To the best of authors’ knowledge, this is the first attempt to fabricate a clean-room compatible device for CSD induction.

Organ-on-a-chip
Microfluidicsl
micro manufacturing

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:19ffc761-3f24-4b3f-8fe5-112421a1e1d2

2022-09-01

Student theses

master thesis

© 2018 Hanieh Mastyani