Organ-on-a-chip for early molecular diagnostic of Schizophrenia: SZ-test
Schizophrenia is a severe mental disorder affecting more than 24 million people in the world. The latest advances in microfluidics could allow a better understanding of this disease and develop diagnostic methods.
This project is completed now. If interested, feel free to contact us.
Microfluidic tools for early diagnostic of schizophrenia: introduction
There is currently no medical test to confirm schizophrenia and no cure. Available treatments are often inefficient and may cause severe side effects.
Molecular mechanisms at the origin of schizophrenia are not fully understood yet, making difficult the development of effective treatments.
This project aims to decipher schizophrenia at a molecular level and to identify new relevant biomarkers to elaborate performant diagnostic tools, allowing early-stage detection and better disease management.
Microfluidic tools for early diagnostic of schizophrenia: our role
In this consortium of 9 partners, we bring our expertise on cell culture in microfluidics devices, particularly for designing.
Elveflow pressure controller and flow multiplexer will allow one to tune the environment of the cells very precisely and be as close as possible to the in-vivo reality.
This cellular model on-a-chip will be a basis for the study of schizophrenia and the development of early diagnostic tools.
This work should be further developed in the future since the consortium applied for two other European fundings.
References
- Chi, Meiying, et al. “A microfluidic cell culture device (μFCCD) to culture epithelial cells with physiological and morphological properties that mimic those of the human intestine.” Biomedical microdevices 17 (2015): 1-10.
- Kim, Hyun Jung, and Donald E. Ingber. “Gut-on-a-Chip microenvironment induces human intestinal cells to undergo villus differentiation.” Integrative Biology 5.9 (2013): 1130-1140.
- Maurer, Michelle, et al. “A three-dimensional immunocompetent intestine-on-chip model as in vitro platform for functional and microbial interaction studies.” Biomaterials 220 (2019): 119396.
- Kim, Hyun Jung, et al. “Human gut-on-a-chip inhabited by microbial flora that experiences intestinal peristalsis-like motions and flow.” Lab on a Chip 12.12 (2012): 2165-2174.
- De Gregorio, Vincenza, et al. “Intestine‐on‐chip device increases ECM remodeling inducing faster epithelial cell differentiation.” Biotechnology and Bioengineering 117.2 (2020): 556-566.
- Bein, Amir, et al. “Microfluidic organ-on-a-chip models of human intestine.” Cellular and molecular gastroenterology and hepatology 5.4 (2018): 659-668.
- Jalili-Firoozinezhad, Sasan, et al. “A complex human gut microbiome cultured in an anaerobic intestine-on-a-chip.” Nature biomedical engineering 3.7 (2019): 520-531.