Russian Scientists Create a Digital Liver for Experiments
A laboratory organ model can reproduce the responses of human tissue, allowing drugs to be assessed more accurately.
Researchers at Sechenov University have developed a laboratory “liver-on-a-chip” model, the university’s press service said.
According to Anastasia Shpichka, head of the Laboratory of Applied Microfluidics and associate professor at the Institute of Regenerative Medicine, scalability, standardization, and sensitivity to drug compounds are the key advantages of the model — precisely the goals the research team set out to achieve.
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The researchers embedded spheroids composed of three types of cells in a hydrogel enriched with components of sheep liver matrix. This environment helps the cells behave in a more physiologically realistic way. At the final stage, the three-dimensional structure was produced using 3D bioprinting.
The model’s ability to reproduce human tissue responses will make it possible to more accurately evaluate the effectiveness and safety of drugs at the preclinical stage. The platform can also be used to study mechanisms of liver damage and to create personalized models based on cells from individual patients.
The development has demonstrated higher efficiency than the spheroids widely used in current research.
