Modular Tissue-in-a-CUBE Platform to Model Blood-brain-Barrier (BBB) and Brain Interaction

Abstract

With the advent of increasingly sophisticated organoids, there is growing demand for technology to replicate the interactions between multiple tissues or organs. This is challenging to achieve, however, due to the varying culture conditions of the different cell types that make up each tissue. Current methods often require complicated microfluidic setups, but fragile tissue samples tend not to fare well with rough handling. Furthermore, the more complicated the human system to be replicated, the more difficult the model becomes to operate. Here, we present the development of a multi-tissue chip platform that takes advantage of the modularity and convenient handling ability of the CUBE device. We first developed a blood-brain barrier (BBB)-in-a-CUBE by layering astrocytes, pericytes, and brain microvascular endothelial cells in the CUBE, and confirmed the expression and function of important tight junction and transporter proteins in the BBB model. Then, we demonstrated the application of integrating Tissue-in-a-CUBE with a chip in simulating the testing of the permeability of a drug through the blood-brain barrier (BBB) to the brain and its effect on treating brain cancer. We anticipate that this platform can be adapted for use with organoids to build complex human systems in vitro by the combination of multiple simple CUBE units.