Microscale Sensors and Systems for Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine Applications
Speaking at the online symposium, Innovations in Disease Modeling 2022, Dr. Mehmet R. Dokmeci, Associate Professor at the Terasaki Institute for Biomedical Innovation presented his talk on microscale sensors and systems for tissue engineering.
Talk abstract: Tissue engineered constructs and organ on chip platforms are emerging platforms for drug screening applications. The use of three-dimensional constructs created using human cells can potentially be used to obtain human patient responses to particular drugs and may serve as complementary alternatives to animal studies. Moreover, in order to have realistic models of in vitro human organ constructs, the physical and biochemical environments of the tissue constructs need to be monitored and validated with conditions akin to in vivo environments. As such there is an unmet need to develop microfluidic bioreactors or organs on a chip systems with integrated sensors which will provide information about the physical parameters such as pH, osmolarity, temperature, etc as well as the metabolic activity of cultured cells. Cell secreted biomarkers could be utilized to monitor the functionality of cells. The sensor systems are intended for continuous monitoring of the tissue environments for up to several weeks. Another area for niche applications of miniature sensors are in wound monitoring. Specifically, chronic wounds of diabetic patients can be monitored using flexible sensors and if needed the wound could be intervened so as to prevent infection or further complications. In this talk, I will present two examples of sensor systems, (i) a smart bandage for wound monitoring, (ii) miniature physical and biochemical sensors for monitoring microfluidic organ constructs.
