HIROSHI KIMURA
Professor, Micro/Nano Technology Center, Tokai University
Title: Microphysiological System (MPS) Platforms based on Microfluidics
Abstract
Microphysiological systems (MPSs) based on microfluidic technology have attracted attention as a novel method for estimating the effects and toxicities of drugs, providing an alternative to animal tests in drug discovery. In Europe and the United States, various types of MPS are commercially available by some venture companies, and more recently, their practical application has been well promoted. Although MPS has been actively researched in Japan, there has been almost no practical MPS. Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED) has conducted an MPS development project to commercialize domestically produced MPS since 2017. Our research group has developed two types of MPS, Fluid3D-XTM and Kinetic pump Integrated Microfluidic Plate (KIM-Plate), for commercialization in collaboration with Japanese companies in the project.
The Fluid3D-X® is made of engineering plastics and has traditional (or conventional) two-channel layers separated by a porous membrane. This allows for shear stress loading and evaluation of mass permeation and polar transport in membrane-type organs such as the gut, lung, and kidney. To improve the operability of the Fluid3D-X®, we developed a pumping platform equipped with items necessary for pumping, such as a pump and power supply, and automated cell monitoring equipment based on BioStation CT (Nikon).
The KIM-Plate is a novel multi-organ MPS platform integrated with a stirrer-based kinetic pump to evaluate organ-to-organ interactions in cell-based assays easily. The KIM-Plate has a simple structure consisting of open-type 24-well size cell culture chambers connected by microchannels. The greatest advantage is that it can easily coculture highly conditioned cells because conventional culture inserts and cell culture methods can be used in cell preparation.
Our proposed MPSs are expected to facilitate high-quality cell-based assays in drug discovery and biology due to their ease of use and high throughput. In this presentation, we present the overview of these MPSs’ functions and examples of drug evaluation studies using the MPSs.
Short biography:
Dr. Hiroshi Kimura is a Professor in Micro/Nano Technology Center at Tokai University, where he has been since 2012. During 2017-2018 he was a visiting research fellow at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). He received his Ph.D. in bioengineering from the University of Tokyo in 2007. From 2007 to 2012, he worked as a project assistant professor at Institute of Industrial Science (IIS) at the University of Tokyo. His research interests are fundamental microfluidic devices and systems technologies and their applications to biological sciences, including microphysiological systems.