Homeostasis in intestinal organoids at the single cell level

How does the small intestine maintain itself? What mechanism does it use to achieve<br/>homeostasis, and how optimal is this mechanism? We approached these questions<br/>mainly using cell tracking in organoids, for which we developed new cell trackers.<br/>We found that the intestinal crypt uses a surprisingly simple and effective strategy.<br/...

Engineered cell culture microenvironments for mechanobiology studies of brain neural cells

The biomechanical properties of the brain microenvironment, which is composed of different neural cell types, the extracellular matrix, and blood vessels, are critical for normal brain development and neural functioning. Stiffness, viscoelasticity and spatial organization of brain tissue modulate proliferation, migration, differentiation, and...

Cell Tracking for Organoids: Lessons From Developmental Biology

Organoids have emerged as powerful model systems to study organ development and regeneration at the cellular level. Recently developed microscopy techniques that track individual cells through space and time hold great promise to elucidate the organizational principles of organs and organoids. Applied extensively in the past decade to embryo...

Organ-on-Chip In Development: Towards a roadmap for Organs-on-Chip

Organ-on-Chip is considered a potentially game-changing technology born from the convergence of tissue engineering and microfluidic technology. Organ-on-Chip devices (OoCs) are expected to offer effective solutions to persisting problems in drug development and personalized disease treatments. This opinion paper surveys the current landscape in...

Building blocks for a European Organ-on-Chip roadmap

This paper summarizes the outcome of the Organ-on-Chip (OoC) ORCHID Strategy workshop (Leiden, the Netherlands, 17 January 2019) intended to establish a European OoC roadmap through expert discussions, conclusions and recommendations. The workshop identified six specific building blocks for the OoC roadmap: (1) application, (2) specification, (3...