Novel microfluidic device integrated with a fluidic-capacitor to mimic heart beating for generation of functional liver organoids

Abstract

Liver organoids hold a great potential to understand liver development and contribute for drug screening and toxicological testing. However, conventional methods to generate organoids provide insufficient liver functions and less reproducibility, due to lack of controllability of cellular microenvironmental cues. To tackle these issues, we focus on one of the environmental cues, pressure stimuli by heart beating, and develop a microfluidic-based cell culture platform integrating a fluidic capacitor to produce pressure stimuli with hydrostatic pressure. Furthermore, we demonstrate a numerical simulation based on equivalent circuit model for designing the device parameters with sufficient accuracy. This device concept will provide insights into physical micro-environmental regulation on organoid development.