Research Projects

Liver is the most important detoxifying organ of the human body and imitating liver-specific morphology and functionality are critical in the context of biomedical applications like regenerative medicine and drug screening. Considering the long duration and complexity involved in the in-vivo animal testing, in-vitro analysis of liver micro-tissues is an alternative and effective method for drug screening. These cultured micro-tissues called spheroids are treated as a useful alternative model to understand drug metabolism, disease biology in addition to its role as building blocks for liver tissue engineering. Indeed, hIgh throughput generation of liver spheroids is essential for its usage in regenerative medicine. Lab on chip is a novel concept which aims to integrate all the functionalities of a conventional macroscale laboratory into miniaturized chips having a network of microchannels. Further, droplet microfluidics is a powerful platform to generate targeted volumes in the range of pico liters precisely and that can be deployed for the creation of spheroids in large quantities in short periods of time. This project aims to develop, lever micro-tissues using a droplet microfluidic platform and generated spheroids are characterized systematically to understand its applicability in biomedical applications. Usually, HFE 7500 oil is used for generating spheroids using the Gelma culture system which is curable by UV rays. The UV exposure time is approximately 4 minutes which the live cells have to withstand without oxygen. The oil layer also adversely affects the oxygen absorbed by the live cells. Indeed the viability of spheroids greatly depends on the exposure time and availability of oxygen. Thereby a new droplet generation scheme is proposed by oxygenating the Gelma matrix using a compound droplet generation strategy using microfluidics. In the proposed methodology, oxygen bubbles are embedded in the Gelma medium and a compound droplet is generated using a third phase (HFE 7500 oil). Since air is enclosed in the Gelma hydrogel, even though the droplet is surrounded by oil during the UV exposure phase. Thereby, the viability of cells is expected to be more than cell embedded Gelma medium without oxygenation. Moreover, the droplet generation platform can generate a large number of spheroids sequentially. Which indeed can be scaled to meet the requirement of regenerative medicine. Moreover, the hepatocyte spheroids can be directly used at the liver sites through intraportal injection for further healing.